Ironbound Paperbacks
by Corrose
Summary: A collection of Gajeel/Levy stories that offer glimpses of insight into a love so strange and beautiful that it defies comprehension. Ch 13: Without something to live for, he would have faded away from the heartbreak.
1. Dragon's Lair

**Welcome to Ironbound. **

These pieces are individual stories that are only loosely connected to each other. They don't follow a chronological timeline, and they can take place at any point between Gajeel and Levy's developing relationship. They can be seen as offshoots of Tempered Steel & Paper Hearts (although TSPH still has a long way to go) but each story can also act as a standalone individual. Without further ado, enjoy the read, and _review_ if you liked it!

**Disclaimer** - This acts as a mass disclaimer for every chapter - FT doesn't belong to me.

* * *

**Dragon's Lair**

Levy fled, angry tears spilling over despite her attempts to contain them. She could hear Jet and Droy calling for her to stop, more pleading than angry now, but she ran all the faster for it. How_dare_ they! It wasn't fair! How could they hang such a huge decision on her and expect her to be okay with it? Dangling their friendship over her, forcing her to choose between loyalty to her Guild and her loyalty to them as friends? And to show up at her house! How long had they been waiting to pop that one on her? She was crying in earnest now, sobbing brokenly as she ran.

She couldn't stay at her apartment tonight. Even though she was sure the other girls would have booted Jet and Droy out of Fairy Hills in an instant, she knew they would be waiting for her to return so they could throw themselves at her feet and apologize profusely, and right now she didn't WANT to hear their apologies or else she knew she would forgive them, like every other time before.

Which was why she was running to Lucy's house now, hoping that her best friend would let her stay at her apartment for one night, and maybe she could vent her frustrations and private fears that Shadow Gear was falling apart, all because Jet and Droy were unable to accept the fact that Gajeel deserved a chance to prove himself at Fairy Tail!

Panting and winded, she huffed to a stop outside of Lucy's apartment and stood, leaning against the wall for a minute to catch her breath and scrub vigorously at her face to make it look as if she hadn't been crying. Walking up to Lucy's front door, she pinned a cheery smile on her face and knocked three times. She heard Lucy's voice from within, calling "Just a minute!" before the door opened.

Levy opened her mouth to greet her friend, but barely had time to utter "Hello" before she heard a distinctive crash and a coordinated howl of pain from Natsu and Happy, on top of some colorful language from Gray and Erza. Lucy grinned, looking sheepish.

"Hi Levy! Are you here to join the party?"

Levy gaped at her best friend, then at the chaos within.

"Isn't this _your_house, Lu-chan?"

Lucy just laughed, embarrassed.

"Yeah! but it might as well belong to th-NATSU PUT THAT DOWN!" she screamed, as Natsu lifted her dining room table in preparation to throw at Gray, who had, in the few seconds of their conversation, managed to rid himself of his shirt and trousers and was preparing to Ice-make in retaliation.

Levy tried to hide her inner turmoil. She really needed to talk to Lucy right now, but that would be impossible with everyone around. It would have to wait for another day. She grinned so that her thoughts wouldn't show on her face as Lucy turned back to her and smiled "So, why _are_you here tonight, Levy?"

Levy laughed weakly. "I ran out of reading material so I figured I'd drop by and see how you were doing on your novel!"

Lucy glanced outside at the ink-black sky before looking back at her friend with a confused "Whaaat? but it's so late!"

Levy shrugged nonchalantly.

"Yeah! Even the library is closed, so I couldn't go there, but I knew you'd still be up!"

Lucy sighed and flapped her hand dramatically. "Well, I haven't gotten anywhere with that ever since these clowns started coming around! You can re-read what I have if you want to though!"

Levy declined with a murmur and Lucy grinned at her friend with a wistful "That bad, huh?" and they both shared a laugh while Levy held up her hands in defense.

"Well, Lu-chan, I better go...it looks like you have more than enough on your hands!" Levy pointed to where Erza had joined the fray, and all 3 combatants were locked in a wrestling match that was quickly decimating Lucy's living room. Lucy tossed a quick "bye-bye" back to her friend before closing the door. Levy grinned as she heard Lucy screaming at the three of them to get out of her house. Of course, no one came out and things quieted down after that.

Now alone with her thoughts and reluctant to return, Levy wandered about Magnolia, trying NOT to think about Jet and Droy. Of course it was impossible and she felt angry tears begin to gather at the corners of her eyes. Now that she had cooled down from her mad dash away from Fairy Hills, she realized that tonight was actually very cold, and all she was wearing was her dress and sandals. She hadn't even the foresight to bring a jacket.

"Stupid," she murmured, kicking angrily at the ground with the toe of her sandal.

With nothing else to do, she sank down against the grey stone wall of her favorite cafe along Magnolia's Main Street and hugged her knees to her chest, hiding her face against the cold. She felt sad and lonely and pathetic and it was all she could do not to cry at the injustice of the whole situation and her overall lameness and had she mentioned that it was cold, and-

She was jolted out of her miserable reverie by a blunt voice that cut straight through all her self-pity.

"What the hell are you doing out here?"

She jerked up to see Gajeel, standing in the middle of Main Street glaring at her, a travel bag slung over his shoulder.

_Of course, it just __**had **__to be him,_ she thought, hastily brushing away any stray tears with her sleeves. Of all the inopportune moments for him to show up, it had to be now, when she had tears and snot all over her face and horrible blotchy skin from crying. She stood up, glad for the shade that the cafe's canopy cast over her. Maybe he wouldn't be able to see her bad skin tone after all. Shivering at the bite of the cold night air, she replied, her anger making her bold.

"I'm just out for a stroll at midnight, can't you see that, Gajeel? Or would it be rude of me to ask you to mind your business?" The last part was spoken more forcefully than she had intended and she quickly covered her mouth and shrank back.

Gajeel was impressed. _The rabbit speaks_, he thought to himself, grinning. She had finally looked him straight in the eye and actually talked back to him, without that god-damned quaver of fear in her voice. Obviously her stupid story about going for a midnight stroll was crap, and if she thought that she could hide the fact that she had been crying from him by standing in the shade, she was dumber than he thought. Apparently she didn't count on his sensitive nose and hearing. The cold night air kept smells low to the ground and easy to identify, and he'd heard her pathetic sniffling long before he rounded the corner to Main Street.

Levy could see Gajeel looking her over and despite herself, she shivered at the bad memory before steeling her nerve and telling herself that bygones were bygones. The Gajeel standing in front of her now was a completely different person from the one who had assaulted Shadow Gear.

"What are YOU doing out so late at night, Gajeel?"

He shrugged and gestured at his travel pack.

"I just got back from a mission. You still didn't answer my question."

She looked away from him and didn't say anything, shivering visibly and hugging herself to stay warm. Gajeel frowned, taking in her state of dress (or lack thereof). What the hell was she doing without a jacket?

In a few strides, he crossed the distance between them and plonked his travel bag on the ground, rummaging through it. He tried to ignore how she had leapt away from him the moment he started walking towards her and he ignored her now as she looked at him askance, her entire posture fearful. He tossed her his heavy travel cloak, and she barely caught it, weighted down as it was at the ends with a lining of metal studs.

"I don't know what the hell you're doing strolling about in this weather without a jacket, but that should tide you over until you get back to...wherever the hell you're going."

Gajeel gathered his bag back up and left without another word. He was nearly to the end of Main Street before he glanced back and sighed in frustration. Levy was still standing there looking lost and holding his cloak like it was a snake about to bite her. He yelled at her from down the street, making her jump.

"Isn't your place that way?" He pointed in the general direction of Fairy Hills.

She didn't say anything and whirled on one foot, turning her back to him on purpose. He put one hand up to his temples and tried to massage away the pulsing headache he now had from this whole stupid situation. God _damnit_. He should have just left well enough alone. Now that he knew she was out, if she turned up dead in the morning, his conscious would never let him live it down.

Gajeel walked the entire way back up the street, cursing mentally all the way until he was finally standing in front of her again. Levy had sank back down against the wall and had his cloak draped awkwardly about her. He fought the urge to put it on her correctly and instead sank down next to her.

"Why the hell aren't you going back to your house?" he asked, with barely contained impatience. Levy sniffled and hugged his cloak and he felt a prickling of dread along his spine. Holding up a hand to forestall her answer, he muttered a quick "Please don't cry."

Her mouth set into a hard line and she looked down and swiped at her eyes, buying time to compose herself. Her voice was small and sad when she finally answered.

"Jet and Droy..."

Gajeel rolled his eyes. _Shit_. He should have figured that if anyone could make a girl cry, it would be those two idiots.

"What did they do?"

Levy stayed silent, hugging her knees to her but didn't reply.

"It was probably something about me, huh?"

She didn't look him in the eye, but she nodded once, emphatically. Her chin was trembling minutely and she bit her lip fiercely to stop it, but her tears welled up nonetheless, turning her world into a shimmering, blurry landscape of blue and gray.

Gajeel snorted.

"Fucking figures. Well, if that's the reason you aren't going back, that's just stupid. It's cold ou-"

She cut him off sharply. "I don't want to see them."

She was crying silently now, big tears running down her face, and his insides squirmed uncomfortably. When the hell had he gotten so sensitive to girls and their tears?

"I want to stay mad at them, those...those jerks!" She slammed her fists into the ground and winced at the pain. Half-sobbing, half-laughing, she swiped at her eyes again. "Is that so stupid of me? If I see them, I know that I'll forgive them, and right now I just want to be angry."

Gajeel frowned. "It's not stupid. You're not stupid."

He stood up abruptly and tugged at her elbow. "C'mon."

"W-what?" She was looking at him confusedly, and her eyes were huge and soft and uncomprehending and if he looked for too long, he might get suckered into doing _anything_ for her so he snapped his gaze stiffly away.

"You can crash at my place to avoid them."

Levy instantly broke into a bleary smile and he was quick to add "But this is a one-time deal only, got it?"

She smiled at him regardless and his stomach jumped and did a weird flip before settling. Levy was still dusting herself off as Gajeel started walking towards his apartment, looking back occasionally to make sure he wasn't leaving her behind.

"And for god's sake, put the cloak on correctly!" he snarled, stopping to yank his travel cloak roughly over her head, fastening the clasps for her and muttering angrily to himself. Levy jerked in surprise at his sudden movement, but she let him adjust the cloak to his satisfaction, and now she trailed behind him in the too-large outfit, his tiny hooded shadow.

* * *

They trekked until they reached a small, shabby-looking house on the outskirts of Magnolia. Levy shivered in trepidation as she saw the crude metal crosses planted forebodingly in his front yard and the bars stapled across the windows, next to the repeating rows of metal studs that lined his front door.

Gajeel yanked open the door and walked in without a backwards glance to usher her in, and she dithered for a second, trying not to think about how much the entrance looked like the gaping, dark mouth of some huge animal, just waiting to swallow her.

Gajeel's impatient "Oi! You comin' in or not?" finally pushed her into action, and without time to hesitate further, she leapt through the open doorway.

It was dark inside, and she shivered weakly and drew the rough fabric of the travel cloak tighter about her as she looked left and right frantically, trying to pierce the darkness. Gajeel's voice cut through the silence, coming from a disembodied point somewhere in front of her.

"It isn't much, but this is where I live."

He tossed his travel bag into a corner, where it landed with a discordant clang of metal. Levy winced, then heard the flick of a match and then there was light as Gajeel lit a candle on a sconce by the door.

She looked around at his apartment, taking it in, completely amazed at how much steel he could fit under one roof. Honestly it looked more like a den than a house, with how he had altered it to fit him. The entire interior was jam-packed with all sorts of metal contraptions and trinkets made with varying degrees of skill. A huge assortment of weapons was stashed throughout the living room, but besides the metal, there was very little to indicate that a living, breathing person lived here.

Levy hurried away from the cold loneliness of the darkened living room to find Gajeel in the kitchen dining area, lighting another candle on the table. The table itself was covered with all manner of bolts and screws and metal attachments. She wondered how it stayed standing with the weight of all that steel packed on top of it. Then Gajeel turned to face her and she was suddenly afraid.

Here she was in the lair of the Iron Dragon, surrounded by the hard glitter of his steel treasure. She swallowed weakly, feeling like a hostage. Gajeel himself didn't help by looking extremely intimidating, his face shadowed harshly in the flickering candlelight so that his eyes reflected at her in red glints.

He turned away from her and the moment was lost and she could breathe again. Walking towards a closed door she hadn't noticed previously, he opened it, gesturing inside.

"That's the bedroom. There's a shower in there if you feel like freshening up. You can stay here tonight, but if you're gonna leave, let me know so I can make sure you get back to your place. It doesn't matter either way."

"I'm not leaving," she said softly.

He shrugged indifferently, moving past her and heading into the kitchen.

She sighed and tried to calm her nerves. It was all right that she was in this relatively unknown man's house by herself. It was all right that she would be staying the night with aforementioned unknown man.

It was...it was _NOT_all right, she concluded, hanging her head, but looking at Gajeel, who was sitting at the dining table and fiddling with a small metal box, she had the feeling that things might be okay, at least for now. That hopeful, optimistic feeling faded the longer the silence stretched between her and the Iron Dragon.

She scuffed her toe awkwardly against the wooden floorboards, hoping to attract his attention, but he didn't even twitch from what he was doing, which was steadfastly ignoring her, and she felt desperately self-conscious. Silently, she folded her legs under her, sitting with her back to the bedroom wall and buried her face into her knees. She tried not to think about the overwhelming loneliness of having the sole person in the room pretend that she wasn't there, and bit her lip to stifle her tears as her recollection of the day came back to taunt her.

Gajeel froze when he heard her start to sniffle again. _Why did she always have to cry?_He turned in his chair with a snarl to chew her out.

"YOU-!"

At that moment, she looked up at him hopefully, her eyes soft and shaded with tears and his mouth suddenly went dry and something in his brain seemed to lock up and he didn't really remember what he was saying anymore. He was left with his mouth hanging open and one accusatory finger still jabbed in her direction. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it and decided that discretion was the better part of valour and abruptly turned to hide his flushed face, leaving behind a thoroughly-confused Levy.

She looked at his hunched back, brow furrowed as she tried to figure out what had just happened. He was ignoring her again, so she sighed and looked to her right at the open bedroom door.

Well, a shower _did_ sound good, and she brightened at the prospect. Maybe it would help clear her frazzled mind and soothe her jangled nerves. Silently, she got up and slipped into the master bedroom.

It was as stark as the rest of his house. One large bed sat in the center of the opposite wall, with a single pillow and one thin, flannel blanket that looked scratchy. There was a large wardrobe dominating the wall next to the bed and she wondered if it contained several of the same outfits she always saw him wearing. That was the only explanation for his ability to wear the same thing every single day.

She stuck her head into the master bathroom, noting the scratchy-looking towel hanging on the rack and the dingy state of the tile flooring. Walking to the large tub, she fiddled with the gauges until she was reasonably sure how the shower worked before walking back to lock the bathroom door. She was pretty sure that Gajeel wouldn't just walk in, but then again, you never knew.

She turned the water on and undressed gingerly as steam began to fill the room, continuously shooting nervous glances at the door, which remained firmly shut. Finally, telling herself that she was being ridiculous and paranoid, she stepped into the shower and sighed with relief under the hot water, letting the stream wash away her troubles for the moment.

Reaching for the shampoo, she found that there was nothing on the rounded bathtub ledges except a single bar of soap. _Well, how did__**that**__work_, she wondered, tilting her head to look at the single white bar as she tried to figure it out. Did Gajeel wash his hair with his soap too? No way! How did it manage to stay so clean and shiny-looking? Shrugging, she decided that she'd just take another shower tomorrow and wash her hair a little more thoroughly, because no way was she going to use soap on her hair! That was just weird!

She finished up the rest of her shower with no further complications, and it was only as she was thinking about her comfortable pajamas that she realized…

"Gajeel! I-I didn't bring any clothes to change into!"

Gajeel, who had been crouched underneath his table trying to fix the god-awful annoying uneven fourth leg, jerked upright at her shout, banging his head on the underside of his table and sending miscellaneous bolts and screws tumbling to the ground. Clutching his head, he cursed violently. _He was blushing, god damnit…_

"Fucking shoulda known...Hold on!" He yelled back to her. A minute later his knock came at the door.

Levy opened it timidly and steam swirled out in pale tendrils as it met the cooler outside air. She stuck her head out of the crack in the door, hair dripping an awful mess onto the floorboards and peeked out to see Gajeel standing with his back to the wall on her far left, looking diligently away from the door and holding out some clothes at arms-length.

"Here, you can borrow these for tonight," he muttered sullenly.

Levy managed to snag the clothes from his hand, but he was standing so far away that she had to squeeze her entire arm up to the shoulder through the tiny gap between door and wall to get them. He fled immediately once she had the clothes in hand, and embarrassed, she slammed the bathroom door with a little more force than was necessary before looking down to consider what he had given her.

He'd grabbed a simple pair of boxers, a pair of flannel pajama pants and a sleeveless T-shirt for her, and they all looked far too big, but she set them carefully aside as she climbed back into the bathtub to finish her shower.

She lounged about under the hot water for a few more minutes before sighing and reluctantly turning the water off, wringing her hair out as best she could before reaching for the single towel on the rack. She wrinkled her nose at the dirty grey color, and hoped that it was reasonably clean before tentatively wrapping it around herself and stepping out of the tub.

_It was scratchy_, she thought, as the cheap fabric bristled against her shower-soft skin. Toweling herself off thoroughly and wrapping the damp towel about her hair so she wouldn't drip, she reached for the boxers and started to get dressed.

They were a reasonable fit, _thank god for elastic waistbands_, but the pajama pants were hopelessly huge, and she wound the drawstring as tightly as possible, folding the baggy bottoms so they wouldn't drag along on the ground. Holding up the shirt, she considered it apprehensively, looking at the immodest dip of the arm holes. Gajeel's arms were _tons_bigger than hers, so when she pulled it on, it naturally exposed more than she would prefer for modesty's sake.

She yelled, knowing he could hear her through the door.

"Gajeel? Do you have a smaller shirt or something that you sleep in? This shirt you gave me is...it's a little too big."

"I sleep without a shirt," was his terse reply through the door, and her face flamed crimson at that totally unnecessary piece of information. Falling into an embarrassed silence, she tied knots into the shoulders to make sure it would stay up.

When she finally exited, rubbing the rest of her hair dry with the scratchy towel, Gajeel turned and snorted incredulously.

"You look ridiculous." He said bluntly.

She blushed angrily.

"Well, your clothes are too big for me!"

"Serves you right for not bringing any. Beggars can't be choosers."

She opened her mouth to retort but then thought the better of it, turning away from him stubbornly. He was fine with that, and returned to his metalwork on the table without giving her a second glance.

Levy went back into the bedroom and sat on the large bed. She bounced up and down angrily, knowing that Gajeel could hear the squeaking springs from outside, and she hoped it was annoying him to pieces! She paused to listen for a reaction, but there was nothing but silence and the occasional clink of metal on metal and she fumed. She'd teach that big iron lunkhead to ignore her!

Standing up, she started to jump up and down on the bed, listening to the springs creak and groan under her overenthusiastic leaping. She bounced for several minutes, until she was breathless and flushed, and finally sank down onto the bed, panting and in a much better mood than when she had started. She cocked an ear towards the door. Still nothing, not even angry muttering. She sighed. The Iron Dragon was incorrigible and there was nothing to be done about it.

She lay on the bed and rolled about until she was bored to tears and static-y all over from the cheap flannel blanket before finally going outside and sitting along the wall to his bedroom to watch him work. She was too far away to actually see what he was doing, but the focused intensity of his expression and the careful, authoritative movements of his hands over the shining metal intrigued her.

She edged closer in tiny increments until she was finally sitting across from him at his kitchen table. Finally satisfied with her view, she drew her legs up to her chest and watched him work, rapt with interest. _His fingers are very deft,_ she thought, watching him examine and easily take apart a delicate bunch of gears, sifting them into makeshift piles according to size.

Gajeel continued to ignore her, although why she would want to watch him do something as boring as sort metal escaped him. He stole a split-second glance at her, to see that she was staring at his hands with a captivated expression, eyes wide and interested.

He gave a mental shrug at her fascination with something so mundane and continued to work, and the silence between them stretched into something more comfortable until he nearly forgot she was there, small as she was, curled into a little ball and practically disappearing in his too-large clothes.

It wasn't until he realized that she was falling asleep where she sat that he stopped to watch as her head dipped and bobbed. He held his breath and tried not to laugh as her head drooped low, almost touching the table before she jerked upright again, only for the process to repeat itself.

He finally took pity on her after she nearly smashed her face into the table on a particularly deep dip. Getting up quietly, he shook her shoulder gently (he didn't want to scare her, that's all, he told himself)

"Go to bed before you give yourself brain damage," he said, trying to sound cranky.

Her eyes were soft with sleep, and she hastily wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist, murmuring a protest about not being sleepy, but he grabbed her upper arm, which was all of his entire wrist – _why was she so damn small?_ and pulled her along behind him, pushing her into his bedroom and closing the door behind her before stalking to his couch.

In the all-encompassing silence, Levy swallowed weakly and fumbled her way over to the bed, climbing in and pulling the thin blanket around her. His room had no windows and the darkness was absolute and she was _scared_.

Her bedroom in Fairy Hills was warm and cozy and blocked in on every side with books to create a comforting wall of words and paper around her as she slept, but his room was huge and she could_feel_ the cold, empty expanse of space as it loomed threateningly overhead and it made her feel vulnerable and exposed, like she was sleeping out in the open and the emptiness was a prelude to attack. She felt like if she spoke, her voice would echo off the bare walls and reflect back at her, so she stayed utterly silent, afraid to even move for fear of the waiting darkness.

She wasn't remotely sleepy anymore as the blackness pressed in close and fear crawled in shivering trails along her spine, and she bolted upright and hugged the single pillow to her chest to ward off the growing panic.

_It'll be okay, Levy. Don't be such a silly little crybaby!_ She admonished herself, squeezing the pillow like a stuffed animal, but her arguments turned feeble as fear built up in her chest with every passing second of darkness. Finally, unable to bear the stony, unending silence and pitch-black loneliness of his room, she called out.

"Gajeel!"

She thought that she was going to scream when finally the door opened and she nearly sobbed with relief as Gajeel entered, holding a lighted candle to find her hugging the pillow to herself like she would disappear if she let go of it.

"What the hell is wrong?" His voice was peeved and his eyes were narrow red slits.

She cast her eyes down to where she was twisting his blankets into knots in her apprehension.

"Spit it out! I don't want to stand here all day," he snarled.

"Gajeel...can you leave the candle here? I-I don't like the dark..."

Her voice was thin with fear, like someone was squeezing the information forcefully out of her and he sighed, passing a hand over his eyes.

"Look. I don't have that many candles to waste on account of you being scared of something as dumb as the dark."

She opened her mouth, terrified and he held up his hand.

"Which is why I'll...I'll sit here til' you fall asleep. Okay?"

Gajeel looked at the worry mark deepening between her eyes, knowing that she was weighing her fear of the dark against her fear of him and suddenly he hated himself for making that offer in the first place, irrationally hoping that she would reject it so he could burn her with a snide comeback. _When the hell had he become so soft?_

Finally she looked back at him and nodded shakily and he wasn't sure to be relieved or angry, but he jerked his head stiffly away (those _eyes_), going out to grab a chair from the dining table. Returning, he planted the chair by the doorway with a grumble and sat down himself before blowing out the candle.

The room went dark and still, and he heard Levy grope about for the blanket as she tried to make herself comfortable. He closed his eyes, crossed his arms, tried to get comfortable (which was completely impossible, given that he was sitting in a rickety, badly-made wooden chair), and sighed as Levy's voice floated out of the darkness, small and scared.

"Gajeel? Are you there?"

"Yeah. I'm here."

A few minutes of silence passed and he had just managed to droop into a light doze when her voice came again, tense and uncertain.

"Gajeel?"

He jerked awake with a growl. "Yeah? What?"

"I-it's nothing. Good night."

A couple more minutes passed before her hesitant voice came again.

"Gajeel?"

This time he burst out of the chair, fighting a roar of impatience and stomped over to his bed, cursing as he kicked something in the darkness. He could hear her shrinking away, her heart hammering as he finally managed to find the bedposts in the dark, and he sat himself on the very edge of the bed, as far away from her as possible, with his back to the headboard.

"God damn…Is this better? How the hell are either of us supposed to get any sleep when you keep on fucking checking if I'm there every 5 seconds?"

Levy was quiet, but the fearful hum of her heartbeat settled to a more reasonable rate and he heard the swish of blankets as she gathered the bedding around her again. Finally, there was blessed silence.

He twitched with surprise as her hand landed on his arm in the darkness. She hesitantly patted her way down to his fingers and gently took his index finger into one small hand. He was faintly aware that his heart was battering a wild rhythm against his ribs. _What the hell was this?_

"I-is this okay?" She squeezed his finger gently.

He didn't think he had enough air in his lungs to answer her, but somehow he managed a weak "Yeah..."

She murmured a shy thanks and he didn't know how to respond. _What was this?_He asked himself again, swallowing tensely and trying to ignore the fluttering sensation where his heart used to be.

"Gajeel?" She gave his finger a sleepy squeeze.

"Yeah?"

"Your blankets are scratchy."

He grinned in the dark. "Go to sleep, shorty."

And she did.

* * *

**A/N** - This story sorta acts as a prequel to Levy's Secret Santa gift for Gajeel.


	2. Headband

A/N - Thank you all so much for all your reviews on the previous chapter! I'm just glad that there are so many Gajeel x Levy fans out there that love this pairing as much as I do! _  
_

This little thing is roughly based on Gajeel and Levy's Chapter 213 cover, where they're both wearing headbands.

**Rating:** T for Gajeel's wandering hands (and mind)

* * *

**Headband **

"Gajeel!"

"NO. For the last time, NO. I'm not wearing that!"

The Iron Dragonslayer scowled as he sat in the corner of the small dressing room, shoulders drawn up protectively and his bulky arms crossed tight over his chest. He was wearing a crisp, collared dress shirt underneath a long, gray jacket, with black slacks to complete the look, courtesy of Levy. He thought that he looked pretty decent, but there was one point of contention which he refused to concede to her otherwise fitting fashion choices.

He glared, slit-eyed at Levy, who was standing with her arms akimbo. She was holding a wide headband in one hand, and he directed the full force of his glare towards it, hoping to make it _combust _with the sheer intensity of his desire not to wear it.

"But Gajeel, you'll look so cute!"

Gajeel scowled darkly.

"I don't want to look _cute_. That's for YOU to do."

Levy blushed at that, but didn't relent. She walked over to him, hiding her smile as Gajeel hunched his shoulders at her approach. He looked like a big, ruffled bird of prey, and she thought he was adorable.

Gently looping the headband around his neck, she plopped herself down in his lap and scooted up until she could cross her ankles behind his back. Gajeel uncrossed his arms and stammered incoherently, a fierce blush coloring his face as he tried to edge away from her, looking for a way out.

"C'mon Gajeel," she cajoled, using the headband to tug him a little closer.

She kissed him gently on his cheek and again on his jaw, nibbling down his neck before retreating to smile at him. Gajeel looked slightly fuzzy and distinctly cross-eyed as he frowned down his nose at her, his blush creeping up his ears. Levy fought a giggle, and leaned forwards to kiss his nose, drifting downwards to nibble lightly on one of the studs decorating his chin.

Hovering tantalizingly close to his mouth, she ghosted a feather-light kiss across his lips and he closed his eyes and _shuddered_ underneath her, his breathing speeding up noticeably, his heart pounding a wild cadence in his chest. She leaned away from him right as he leaned forwards in an attempt to catch her lips with his, grinning at his frustrated glare.

"Please, Gajeel? Won't you wear it for me?"

He growled as she pulled the headband out from behind his neck and dangled it hopefully in front of him. Then a huge grin split his face.

"I _might_ be persuaded to wear it-" He angled his eyes at her roguishly, arched one eyebrow suggestively - "For the right price."

Levy pouted instantly and struck his chest with a small fist and he scoffed in surprise.

"What? I thought that was what you were trying to go for, all sitting on my lap and-"

She shut him up with a quick kiss, retreating before he could deepen it, then looked away sadly, fiddling with the headband.

"I-I just wanted to be able to say that I picked out your clothes today, that's all..."

Gajeel closed his eyes and groaned. Why did she have to _do_ this to him? Sighing, he felt his pride crumble as he bowed his head for her, closing his eyes.

"God damn it...freakin'...go ahead. Do it. Hurry up."

Levy brightened so quickly that it confirmed his sneaking suspicion that she had been putting on an act, but before he could regret his concession, she had straightened up on his lap and tugged the headband firmly over his forehead, tying the ends under his thick hair.

He inhaled and gripped her waist gently, trying (failing) to ignore how close they were as he ran his thumb along the warm hollow at the base of her spine, fingers trailing lightly along the expanse of exposed skin from her belly to her side. Levy gasped at his wandering fingers, her own hands stilling in his hair.

"Gajeel! Don't!"

Gajeel ignored her little squeak as he leaned forward and pressed a slow kiss to the warm, bare skin just under her breast, fighting the urge to do more than just kiss when he felt the smooth skin go taut under his lips as Levy arched against him, her fingers tangling in his hair.

He gave a disappointed sigh as she slipped off his lap, scolding him and gathering up the multitude of discarded outfits that littered the floor to hide her red face. Getting up to follow her, he hooked his arm around her slender waist, pulling her close to bury his face in her sweet-smelling hair.

Levy blushed quietly and tried not to drop her armful of clothes and hangers as Gajeel inhaled deeply before letting her go, obvious reluctance clouding his face. With a grimace, he stepped back and held out his arms for her inspection, his eyes flicking up to the headband and narrowing with annoyance.

"Well, how stupid do I look?" he asked wearily.

Levy looked back at him, her eyes shining happily before throwing the clothes haphazardly to the ground and leaping up to wrap her arms around his neck. Gajeel grinned down at her as she kissed his cheek and gave him the same answer he always gave her.

"I think you look amazing."

He smiled fondly at her before replying "Right back at you," grinning at her subsequent (so predictable) blush.

Letting her down gently, Gajeel turned back to the mirror, inspecting himself with a critical eye.

"Eh. I guess it's okay, but..." and without warning, he tore off the sleeve of the gray jacket, following suit on the other side. He grinned sharkishly at Levy's horrified shriek before turning back to her, now wearing a sleeveless gray tunic over the white dress shirt.

"Isn't this better?"

Levy sputtered hopelessly for a few seconds before throwing up her hands in exasperation and stomping out of the dressing room. Gajeel trailed closely behind her with an unbearably smug smirk as he considered his new outfit.

_Not too shabby at all. _

* * *

A/N - As always, thanks for your support and love! Your reviews are the bright spot in my insomnia-riddled nights as I write more GajeelxLevy for you, haha. _  
_


	3. Like a Pillow, only better

**Title:** Like a Pillow, Only better  
**Pairing:** Gajeel/Levy  
**Rating:** K**  
Summary:** Pointless cuddlefluff. Levy cuddles up to Gajeel. He cuddles back. The world must be ending.

* * *

**Like a Pillow, only better**

He was lying down, and she draped herself lightly over him and closed her eyes, smiling as she felt the steady rise and fall of his breathing under her cheek. He was warm and solid and comfortable and _hers_, like a pillow, only better, and she found herself cuddling into his stomach to get closer to him.

Gajeel propped himself up on his elbows and glared at her, obviously unhappy at being treated like a large stuffed animal, and she gave him a happy, silly smile back. He rolled his eyes, sighing in resignation and reached for her, placing his hand on her head. Levy closed her eyes in response and hummed with pleasure as he threaded his fingers gently through her hair, stroking carefully. She leaned into his touch, quietly savoring the moment, and Gajeel took the opportunity to reach out and gather the rest of her to him, tucking her snugly to him and resting his chin on top of her head.

He continued to stroke her hair, long slow caresses starting from the crown of her head all the way to her shoulder blades, before moving on to explore the curve of her ear with his fingertips, giving her earlobe a gentle tug before returning to her hair. Levy nuzzled into the warm curve of his jaw, loving herself to him, practically purring with happiness. These quiet moments where Gajeel allowed his softer side to shine through were far too few in her opinion, and she took every chance she got to cuddle him relentlessly when he allowed it.

Gajeel gave a quiet, contented sigh and tightened his arms possessively around her, pressing a firm kiss to the top of her head. Every nerve of her thrilled with happiness and she curled into him, pure bliss suffusing her. _He was so cozy_, she thought to herself, as she felt him curve slightly under her, accommodating the shape of her body with his own, and matching his breathing to hers.

She closed her eyes, burying her face into Gajeel's shoulder and inhaling the comforting smell of him, loving the steady beat of his heart against her own. In the circle of his arms, she felt safe in a way that nothing else could match. The warm, solid reality of him was reassurance enough for most of her fears and doubts, and he never hesitated to comfort her. He seemed to know exactly when she needed him, seeing through all her facades with cutting clarity. She nestled her face into the warm hollow of his neck and shoulder, yawning softly. He pressed his cheek to her hair, and murmured low into her ear, his voice gruff and gentle.

"Go to sleep."

She dropped a kiss on his neck and shivered with delight when he nibbled her ear in response.

"Don't want to." She stifled another yawn and settled her face more securely into him, eyes half closed.

"You're tired."

There was no room for argument in his voice, and Levy sighed a little and let him pick her up and take her to bed. She made a small sad sound and clung to him as he set her down. Gajeel rolled his eyes and shifted in with her and she waited for him to settle before wrapping herself around him again. He gathered her to him with one arm and sighed softly, turning his head to nuzzle her gently.

She gave him a peaceful smile, and was soon asleep, her breathing soft and even.

* * *

**A/N** - Urgh. dying of fluff here. I usually don't write such sappy things, but nnnnngh. THE CUTE.

Anyhow, you guys like? :)


	4. Sleeping Dragons

**Title:** Sleeping Dragons/Fairy Tales  
**Pairing:** Gajeel/Levy  
**Words**: ~1400  
**Rating:** K+**  
Summary:** Gajeel lies comatose, lost in his own darkness. Levy waits for him and hopes and reads him fairy tales.

* * *

**Sleeping Dragons**

Sometimes, she reads to him with only the steady beeping of his heart monitor to keep her company, reads him tales of princesses and knights and long, golden hair unfurling in the wind. His eyes stay closed and his breathing doesn't change, and on those nights, she leaves with her face wet, silent tears slipping slowly down her cheek.

Occasionally, she'll read about dragons and heroes and vast underground caves dripping with golden treasure, but she always alters the ending so that the dragon wins the princess's heart and eats the knight's armor. His eyes stay closed and his breathing doesn't change, and with every monotonous sunrise and sunset, she loses a little more hope.

Finally, one day she sits at his bedside, cheek propped up on one hand, eyes raw and red and heavy with no more tears left to cry. She clears her throat hopefully and addresses him directly.

"Today, I want to tell you a story…a tale about an angry, steel-clad dragon and a princess who loved books, and their friends and their enemies and the time they spent together."

She reads their story to him like it's a fairy tale, and it might as well be, for all the trials they've gone through in order to love each other, and her voice is singsong and sad as she spins the rest of her heart into it.

That night when she leaves, his finger twitches in the dark, the only sign that there's any life still left in him.

The next morning, she comes again, has been coming as regular as clockwork for the past two years, but this time, there's an air of finality about her. Today is the day she brings him back or - or nothing. There is no other alternative. She's tired of waiting.

She goes into his room and locks the door and barricades it with all the furniture in the room, throwing her slight weight at the bookshelves to make them grind across the white tile floor. Then she rolls up her sleeves and gets to work. She starts off talking, and when that doesn't work, she starts to scream, shouts for him to wake until her throat is raw and angry and half-gone. She throws things and breaks the pot of plants by his bedside and feels remorseful because they hadn't done anything bad to deserve it. The nervous flutter of nurses' voices comes from beyond the door, but she shores it up with more Solid Script and returns to her task grimly.

She cajoles him, begs him, threatens him and apologizes for it, sings him songs and tells him stories and dirty jokes, throws herself across his chest and shakes him angrily, then desperately, then hopelessly. The sun is starting to go down and they're calling for a battering ram when she finally sits, exhausted on his bedside and cups his unresponsive face in her hand. His hair is in disarray and his bedsheets are rumpled, but other than that, his eyes stay closed and his breathing hasn't changed and there is no sign that she's spent the last ten hours trying to wake him from this miniature death. Her chin trembles but her face is dry.

She hovers over him and thinks madly of fairytale stories where princesses are brought out of sleep as deep as death by their shining prince's kiss. Only she isn't a prince. She's not even a princess, and Gajeel is a _dragon_, and how many times has she kissed those cold lips in the two years that they've lain dormant, with no response?

Still. She takes his limp hand gently into her own, strokes his beautiful, high cheekbones with her thumb and starts out in a piping voice.

"I…I want to tell you a story, about a girl who fell in love with a dragon. The dragon loved her back, and their lives were whole. Then one day, the dragon was…was hurt, and fell into a deep, deep sleep. The girl waited and waited but the dragon slept a sleep darker than death, and she could not call him back. She waited and the leaves grew out on trees then fell off then grew back again, and she was ready to wait forever, but then an idea occurred to her."

She drew a gasping, shuddering breath and realized with slight surprise that she was crying. Where had these tears come from? She thought that she had lost the ability to cry after weeping and waiting for so long. Regardless, she continued, tears streaming down her face to land with soft plips on his unresponsive skin.

"Um. An idea occurred to her that…that even though she wasn't a prince with a sword on a white horse, and he wasn't a princess with shining golden hair" – she grinned wistfully at the look of absolute, irreproachable insult on his face if he could hear her – "that maybe a magical kiss would be able to wake him." Because why else would she live in a world full of magic, if it didn't exist to grant small miracles like this?

She looks at his face, slack and lifeless under her fingers and despairs, but carries on bravely. She didn't know that if she hadn't knocked over the monitors and plugs attached to him in the beginning of her madness, she would have been able to see that his heart had started to thunder in his chest like a small dynamo, would have seen the wavelength patterns of his mind shifting slowly from death into wakefulness, but her eyes were clouded with her own tears, and she could not see past them.

She cups his face gently with both hands, croons something unintelligible, a farewell or broken admission of love, and presses her lips to his, closing her eyes as two tears slide down the well-worn track of her cheek. She thinks she's going mad when he gasps into her mouth like a drowning man, and nearly screams when his hands find their way to her hips, but then he murmurs her name into her open mouth and he's kissing her back and _nothing else matters_ because he's awake and she will never doubt the power of fairy tales ever again.

When she finally draws away, she's sobbing and laughing at the same time, her tears raining down on him in a steady stream, and he looks blearily up at her, eyes unused to even the half-light of evening after spending so long in the shifting dark. His voice is hoarse and cracked from disuse, the proud muscles of his arms atrophied from the long neglect, but his grin is the same razor-edged smile, and he has eyes for nothing but her.

"Hey Shorty. Ya miss me?" He asks, and grins like he's just said the cleverest thing in the world.

She sobs and pulls him into an unending hug, burying her face wildly into his thick hair _(never mind that it's oily and needs a good washing)_ and she'll _never_ let him go. He chuckles and winces as her hard knees and enthusiastic elbows and chin seem to bruise just by touching him, but hell if he's going to ask her to stop. Instead, he holds her as tightly to him as his wasted arms can manage, shaking with exertion as she weeps into his neck and he whispers the end of the story to her.

"And then the princess kissed the dragon, and the dragon woke with a roar because this was the girl he loved, and the idiot promised never to leave her again, and how could he keep her waiting like that, god dammit."

She sobs with laughter, and presses her face into his, loving herself to him.

"You got it wrong," she says, her voice wavering. "I'm not a princess."

He kissed her silent, her tears wetting his face, and when he pulls away, both their faces are wet, and he doesn't know if they're her tears or his.

"You might as well be," he whispers, his voice breaking. "You saved me."

She sobs with laughter and crushes him to her again and he smiles and holds her close, thinking that it's a strange and twisted fairy tale they live in where the princess has to kiss the dragon in order to save him, but hey, the dragon gets the girl in the end, and that's perfectly all right with him.

* * *

**A/N** - *tear* Premise is a random what-if. I was going to post another fluffles story but this pairing is already oversaturated, so I decided to put in a more serious break between them. Thank you so much to all who reviewed. I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH You honestly make my day every time I see a new review, it makes me so happy (and slightly shocked) that people actually like the stuff I put up. :'}


	5. Book Wyrm

**Book Wyrm**

She's sitting on her bed, her sheets in a warm huddle around her toes, a book propped on her upright knees. He sits next to her with the warm lines of their legs touching and studies her, watching her eyes flick in predictable left-to-right lines across the aging pages, snapping back and forth with typewriter precision. He likes to watch her read, but after the first ten minutes, it gets kinda monotonous, and he's bored.

"Ey, Bookworm, when you gonna be done with that?"

"I'll be done when I'm done," comes her peeved voice. It's the third time he's asked her in five minutes. She turns to him suddenly, snapping her intense concentration away from her book and onto him with brows drawn and a pout pushing her lower lip out. "And why do you always _call_ me that?"

He slants his eyes at her in return. "What, Bookworm? Well…you're a dragon too, yeah?"

"What?" She looks at him, tilting her head to one side (adorable), uncomprehending.

"Book worm. Wyrm. You're a book dragon," he explains. It's as simple as that.

She gives him a look like he's gone crazy. "What does me liking to read have anything to do with me being a dragon?"

He frowns, giving his sentence a mental once-over. Oh yeah. Worm and wyrm sound awfully similar when spoken. He sighs and reaches for a piece of paper, changes his mind and grabs her wrist instead, hauls her into his lap (grins at her undignified hoot of protest) before reaching over her flailing arms and legs for a pencil.

He places the paper square on the flat plane of her thigh, just above the junction of her knee, smoothing the crumpled parchment flat across her skin with the wide palm of his hand. She freezes and he tucks his chin over her shoulder to hold her still. Instinctively, he turns his face towards her and inhales slowly, smiling at the slow tremor that ripples through her in response. Her hair smells nice.

Dragging his attention back to the sheet, he writes it out for her. She watches him, fascinated. He writes with hard, angled strokes, and she can feel the blunt pressure of the pencil tracing its way above her skin. Fervently, she hopes that he won't write hard enough to punch through the paper. That would be awful. She stares instead at the words taking shape in front of her.

Book worm wyrm

He crosses out the word 'worm' with a sharp, decisive line, and she cringes just a little as the barest tip of the pencil plunges through the paper, but it doesn't scratch her. He doesn't notice.

"There," he says grumpily, sitting back, arms winding around her waist. "There, you get it now?"

She smiles, looking at the piece of parchment. "Yeah, Gajeel, I get it now! Is this how you've been referring to me in your mind every time you call me bookworm?" She asked, teasing, craning her head backwards to look at him. He frowns, the barest hint of a blush meandering across his high cheekbones.

"No. Yes. Maybe." He relents at her stare. "Sometimes."

She turns in his lap and gives him a hug, squishing her cheek to his, and she feels his smile stretch slowly across his face as he coils both arms around her, pulling her firmly against him.

"I guess I could be a book dragon," she says, her cheek still pressed to his. "I _do _eat books, after all. Just not" – she winced at the unpleasant idea – "…not literally."

He nudged her chin upwards with his nose so that he could rest his face against her neck.

"You _are_ a dragon," he said, voice slightly muffled. "Just a different sort. And you don't eat books, you freakin' _devour_ them."

She giggled, sank her fingers into his hair. "That's definitely true! Fine then, Gajeel. Since people are always calling you the Iron Dragon, I expect to be called by my name too! Book Wyrm Levy!"

He chuckled and squeezed her waist teasingly. "Yeah, yeah, sure thing. You do know that a wyrm and a dragon are different, right?"

She pouted and stroked his hair. "Hmph. Whatever."

He leaned into her touch and grinned, closing his eyes. "Yeah. Whatever. If I can be your dragon then you can hella be mine."

She smiled at that, pressed a kiss to his forehead, rested her head against his. It was nice to think of Gajeel as her dragon, but to know that he thought of her the same way?

That was just icing on the cake.

* * *

**A/N** - I cannot be the only one to see the awful pun! worm/wyrm? I couldn't resist!

I was trying to go for a more serious/refined take on this story, but it just totally degenerated into fluff on me at the end. I guess I'm just incorrigible like that.

Also, in a shameless self-plug, if you're looking for a realistic re-telling of the character/relationship development behind Gajeel/Levy, I'm trying to do something of the sort with my newest multi-chapter fic - **Tempered Steel and Paper Hearts**. The story starts off from their initial fight, and should go all the way up to the S-class arc, with me trying to fill in the gaps behind the impossibility of how they fell for each other. :)

Reviewers? You're all SEXY. I love you all.


	6. Picknicking

**Picnicking**

"See, Gajeel! Isn't this perfect?"

Gajeel gave a long-suffering sigh as he was dragged into a wooded clearing a few miles south of Magnolia. The only reason he was here was because Levy had tricked him with the promise of having found some custom-wrought iron gates for his lunch, but upon arriving, there were no gates to be seen, only a wildly enthusiastic Levy, wearing a pale orange sundress and lugging a huge basket with both hands.

"We're going picnicking today," she told him brightly, handing him the heavy (what the hell was in it?) basket without preamble and taking his other hand in her own before plunging straight into the forest. Which was how he found himself now, toting a ridiculously overladen wicker basket through the woods, totally lost but for the girl skipping and humming in front of him.

Levy's enthusiasm wasn't catching on, he thought wryly, but the warmth of her small hand in his made things a bit more bearable, so he followed her resignedly until they reached their destination.

She let go of him and he was suddenly bereft (Stupid! he told himself, trying to ignore how he suddenly felt empty without the warmth of her slender fingers around his), but then she was running into the center of the clearing and gesturing wildly at him to follow. He strode to where she was standing and set down the basket with a relieved groan as she yanked the wicker top off and pulled out a folded piece of red and white checkered blanket.

He stood by, feeling awkward as she flapped the cloth so that it unfurled with a faint swish of unfolding fabric, and as he watched, a flash of sunlight broke through the leaves above them and she was suddenly illuminated, the streak of sun falling over her cheek and face and hair, turning the white cloth golden and forming a halo around her bright blue hair. His mouth went dry at how goddamn _beautiful_ she was, and then the moment was lost as she knelt to spread the blanket out, humming and completely unaware of his dazed expression. After she had primped it to her liking, she waved him over, patting the ground next to her.

"C'mon Gajeel, sit down!"

He sat on the checkered cloth, feeling ridiculously domestic and completely out of place as she reached over him for the basket and started to dig around inside it. Instinctively, he leaned back to give her more room. It was awfully nice having a beautiful girl lean over your lap and move about, but Levy's invasion of his personal space bubble made him flush uncomfortably and this whole girly situation was already too much discomfort for one day.

Levy finally managed to fish out a plastic bag full of sandwich triangles, which she shoved enthusiastically in his face. He gave it a cautious sniff and crossed his arms with a noncommittal grunt as she opened the bag and took one of the triangles out. It wasn't like he _couldn't _eat anything but iron, but as a general rule, he preferred iron over anything else, so he declined cautiously as she held the sandwich out with both hands, urging him to take a bite.

"You eat it," he said, poking her forehead.

"But Gajeel! I made these for you!" She protested, batting his hand away.

"Yeah? Are they iron sandwiches?"

She pouted. "No, but they're delicious!"

She took a huge bite before offering it to him again, her cheek bulging. Sighing resignedly, he opened his mouth to take a bite, but she pulled it away at the last minute, grinning, and crammed another bite into her already-stuffed face.

"S'good!" she managed between her gargoyle chomps.

Well. If she wanted to make this into a competition…

He lunged forward, bowling her over easily and his jaws snapped shut in a bite that sounded like a steel trap closing as he demolished the rest of the sandwich. Levy barely managed a squeak as she was knocked over. She lay on the ground for a few stunned seconds before hesitantly looking at her fingers to make sure they were still there. Gajeel's bite had ended bare millimeters before her fingertips, leaving her holding a few forlorn inches of crust.

Gajeel was finishing off his mouthful with a very smug grin. Levy made angry faces at him, but she couldn't keep it up, and finally, she leaned over him again and started pulling out an assortment of plates and utensils and god-knows-what.

With every new thing she pulled out, and her bright, nonstop chatter, Gajeel felt himself shrink a little more into his defensive bubble. His discomfort must have reflected itself on his face because Levy stopped what she was doing and cocked her head at him, the smile sliding off her face, replaced with concern.

"Gajeel, what's wrong?"

He grimaced and fished about for a lie, but couldn't come up with anything convincing enough.

"I feel stupid," he said flatly, and looked down so he wouldn't have to see her hurt expression. His eyes landed on the blanket, and he picked up the checkered cloth gingerly between two fingers.

"This." He let it drop. "This isn't me."

Levy sat up and folded her hands in her lap, fiddling with the hem of her sundress. When she spoke, her voice was small and sad.

"Oh. I'm…I'm sorry Gajeel. I was just…I just wanted to spend some time with you and…and I hoped that I could make your afternoon a bit more fun, since you didn't have anything planned…"

She trailed off and looked so miserable that he instantly felt like a dick for saying anything in the first place, and awkwardly, he reached over and gathered her into his lap. Shyly, he pressed his cheek into her hair and just held her, and after a moment, she shifted to wrap her arms around his neck. He spoke, his voice gruff to try and cover up how bad he felt.

"You don't need to do all this just to make me happy, y'know? All this stuff with baskets and blankets and picnics is whatever. Just being with you is enough."

He felt her lips curve into a smile against his neck.

"I know, but sometimes I want to do more for you than just _be_ there."

He hugged her fiercely. Did she even know what she was saying?

"Just being there is…it's enough. It's more than anyone else has done for me anyways."

She drew back and looked him straight in the eye.

"I know, and it's sad, because you deserve so much more."

And then she was kissing him and he didn't really have anything to add to that, so he let her, content to lose himself in her for a little while. When Levy finally drew back, she smiled at Gajeel's shell-shocked expression and leaned in to kiss his nose again just for good measure.

"Will you still eat my sandwiches?" She asked, giving him pleading eyes. Her smile was contagious and he found himself grinning like an idiot.

"Yeah. I can do that."

* * *

**A/N** – I couldn't NOT do something for Valentine's Day for my favorite couple! (although this doesn't really have a direct relation to Vday at all...mutterignorethat) I had a story in the works along the lines of Secret Santa, involving a bunch of different pairings, but I knew it wouldn't get finished in time ;A;

Oh well, there's always next year! Or, I could post it late, but arrgh then it's beside the point! Anyways, I hope this little drabble sufficed!

Also - I did a little Vday pic if you'd like to check it out! Just remove the spaces and voila! :)

http: / / acidic-fire. deviantart. com /#/d39iazj


	7. Grey Saturdays

**Grey Saturdays**

"Its raining outside," she murmured, and he tightened his grip on her waist with a noncommittal "Mm," before nuzzling his face into the warm, sleepy curve of her neck.

"I guess that means we should stay in."

They do stay in, curled against each other, basking in the each others' warmth. She maps his body with her fingertips, listening for the sharp intake of breath or the slow buck of his hips that means pleasure, and he learns the hidden trails across her bare skin with his mouth, bodies twisting slowly under the sheets into fantastical shapes in the grey morning light, their soft gasps and moans the only sounds to be heard above the gentle rainfall outside.

Afterwards, he holds her, resting his cheek against her disheveled blue hair as she falls into a sated sleep in his arms, listening to the too-fast beats of their tandem hearts as they slow to a less frenzied rhythm, flush with his love for her. He has never loved anything in his entire life as much as he loves this girl now, he thinks.

Metalicana may have saved his life that cold, grey day in the forest, but this girl, she saved his _soul_.

He falls asleep with his face pressed to the comforting warmth of her slender neck and the sound of her steady, sleepy pulse over his, the overlapping symphony of a million quiet raindrops dancing on the windowsill outside.

* * *

**A/N **- it's short, but I thought it'd be fitting, with the dreary weather we're having right now.

I swear I'll post something longer soon ;A;


	8. Jealousy

**Jealousy**

Levy sighed, fingers drumming a repetitive, frustrated rhythm on the papers strewn in front of her.

She couldn't figure out how to solve the last several lines of code on the rune trap that she was dismantling. Recently, she'd felt that if she was ever going to earn her S-class title, she needed to be more informed about text-based magic to truly be a Script specialist, so she was attempting to teach herself the official theory behind Establishment magic and Rune arts, but it was so much harder than she'd first thought! She stole a glance over to where Fried was slouching against the bar, the supreme picture of nonchalant boredom. She studied him in hesitant silence, chewing her lip nervously.

She didn't really know much about Fried. She didn't know any of the Raijinshuu, really, but out of all three of the Thunder Guard, she felt the most affinity with Fried because of their shared specialty in script-based magic, and right now, he was the only one who could help her out. Setting her mouth in a determined line, she gathered her courage before striding across the room to him

"Fried-san?"

Fried looked up in surprise at the small voice that had startled him out of his absentminded daydreaming.

"Oh, Levy. Is there anything I can help you with?"

Levy held out the lines of code and her resulting interpretation and breakdown of the characters, pointing out the problem area.

"Well, I can't really figure the last few lines out, would you mind helping me?" she asked shyly.

Fried took the proffered papers, and to Levy's surprise, pulled out a pair of thin reading glasses to look over her work. He studied her interpretation carefully before glancing at the increasingly-nervous Levy over the top of the sheet.

"This is very impressive work for someone without an official background in Establishment magic, Levy." He laid the papers on the bar and pointed out several past/present tense mixups in the previous lines of code and another point error in the translation rate. "Here and here. These are your mistakes. This one was particularly unfortunate because it carried down to the next paragraph, but if you fix them like so…" he summoned a light pen into hand, marking up the documents – "then you should be able to solve the rest yourself."

"Oh, thank you so much!" Levy said, reaching out for the papers, but Fried put his hand over them before she could take them.

"May I ask what you're doing this project for? Is it a mission?"

Levy shook her head. "No, nothing like that…it's just…a bit of self-improvement?"

Fried's eyebrows shot up skeptically. "Self-improvement? You chose to translate" - he glanced back at the papers – "Advanced Gramarye in the Art of Runeweaving for a _practice_ run?" He shook his head incredulously, a wry smile twisting his mouth. "You really are something else, you know?"

Levy grinned brightly and grabbed the papers back as he lifted his hand. "Well, I just thought…since I was nominated to be an S-class mage, I wanted to be able to support everyone, and if I know how to work rune magic in addition to Solid Script, I'd be much more useful, wouldn't I?"

He nodded, turning back to his drink. "That's a good attitude. If you have further difficulty with the theory, I'd be glad to help you."

"Um, actually…" Levy ducked her head, tapping the floorboards sheepishly with her toe. "Um…I've been meaning to ask you…would you please tutor me in Runes, Fried-san?"

Fried stammered, taken aback by the sudden request.

"Well…I don't really know…"

Levy bowed sharply, blue hair falling in a tumble across her face, arms clamped to her side and half-shouting in the sudden heat of her enthusiasm.

"You're the only one who I can really ask about the more difficult concepts and your battle experience would be so helpful because I still don't know any practical applications for some of the phrases I've learned!" she cried, speaking so quickly that Fried wasn't able to get a word in edgewise. "So…please?" She looked up from her bow with earnest, hopeful eyes and Fried smiled reluctantly. How was he going to say no to that?

"Very well," he agreed.

* * *

The next few days, Levy and Fried were conspicuously absent from their usual places, Fried from his seat at the bar and Levy from her normal table at the far-right wall of the Guild.

Gajeel made his way into the Guild Hall, looking more sour than usual, and if one was perceptive, they would have noticed his slanted eyes drift conspicuously to Levy's empty spot in the second he paused at the door before he stomped his way over to the bar.

Mirajane looked strangely listless, hanging about behind the wooden counter with both hands propped to her face, eyes dull. She didn't even notice as Gajeel sat down, and it was only after he called her several times, finally resorting to shouting that she jerked out of her stupor and filled a tankard, slopping it halfheartedly in front of him.

Gajeel took it and wrinkled his nose. It wasn't his usual, but Mirajane had wandered back to her place and resumed her dronelike staring. Tipping his drink back, he stole a glance to his right, confirming his suspicions. Laxus' green-haired lackey wasn't sitting in his usual place either. Mirajane was usually chatting with him, humming and laughing and cheerful. He compared her gloom now to her normal cheery self, put two and two together, downed the rest of his drink and took off for the only place that two script nerds could possibly spend any extended amount of time in.

Poking his head into the Fairy Tail Archives, he stalked through the shelves until he heard the faint murmur of voices. Peeking behind the shelf, careful to stay hidden, he instantly caught sight of Levy and Laxus' lackey (what the hell was his name again, Fries? Freud?), their heads close together as they pored over a series of thick manuals on the table in front of them.

Fries/Freud pointed at something in the book and snorted softly, and Levy laughed, smacking him playfully on the arm. Even though it was completely ridiculous and absolutely unfounded, a building fury started to swell in his chest at the sight of that man leaning over Levy, _HIS_ Levy, the possessive rage within him hissed, and unbidden, a low snarl bubbled to the surface as his eyes slitted angrily.

Levy and Fried both jerked their heads up at the sudden low growl, but there was nothing behind them but the dusty shelves and silent rows of the Archive. Shrugging, they returned to the complex grammatical differences between standard Gheel and its corresponding ancient form.

The next day, as Gajeel sat at the bar and tried hard not to listen in on Elfman, Jet and Droy's scarring conversation about whether it was the body or the personality that made a true man, a flash of blue in the corner of his eye caught his attention and he sat up as Levy walked into the Guild, a mess of papers and scrolls piled high in her arms. He raised his hand and opened his mouth to greet her as she swept towards the bar, beaming.

He felt extremely foolish then, when she swept right past him, and he turned in disbelief to watch as she flew to where Fried was sitting at the bar. Next to him, Jet and Droy were in a similar state, eyes bulging out of their heads as the stared in slack-jawed disbelief at being completely and utterly ignored.

Gajeel's eye started to twitch as Levy started to babble enthusiastically at Fried, pointing at random papers, holding them up and shaking them excitedly, and his lips peeled back into a snarl as Fried smiled back at her and nodded. Then, of all the unspeakable…Levy threw her arms around his neck and hugged him, laughing. Fried looked taken aback, but hesitantly put one arm around her and patted her back stiffly. To Gajeel's sudden tunnel-vision, it just looked as if he'd hugged her back, and he swallowed as some terrible emotion balled itself up tight in his throat.

His eyes flew to Mirajane, who was watching the same scene unfold with open-mouthed incredulity, the beer tap overflowing in front of her. There was nothing to say. He slipped off his seat and slunk out of the Guild to try and make sense of the indescribable emotion swirling wild and thick in his chest.

* * *

The entirety of his next week was spent stewing in mute rage, watching Levy sweep into the Guild and bustle immediately to Fried without a second glance at her surroundings; watching Fried greet her with a quiet smile before they started to pore over their stupid notebooks. After they were done with the papers, they'd gather their things and head immediately for the library, Levy chattering away like a magpie while Fried nodded and murmured quiet agreement with an abhorrent little half-smile that made Gajeel wanted to tear his face off. It was painfully obvious that they were blissfully ignorant of anyone outside of their little academic bubble. It was as if…as if they were the only two people in the world, Gajeel thought, watching with a mix of baffled rage and frustration as once again, Levy left without even a backward glance at him.

Even Levy's two stooges were completely ignored in the face of her new, shiny, friend, and watching their disappointed glances at her retreating back, he couldn't _believe_ it, but he found himself feeling the same way. He cast a grim glance at Mira's downcast face and figured that she wasn't feeling too hot about being ignored either.

Downing the rest of his drink in a too-large swallow, he gulped and winced at the heady burn of alcohol before sliding the tankard in a well-practiced line down the counter towards Mirajane. She caught it without looking and refilled it mechanically before pushing it back at him. It smacked into the palm of his hand as he shifted a bit to his left, trying to ignore Jet and Droy's melodramatic weeping. Scowling, he swirled the dark amber of his drink a few times before taking another heavy drink, a single repetitive line winding its way through every thought.

_What the hell was going on?_

* * *

One week later, and still no explanation had presented itself.

He wasn't the patient type, and if it were any other person, he would have confronted them belligerently, demanding an answer, but Levy wasn't some other person, and he was new enough at this relationship business as it was without his bullheadedness getting him into trouble, but it was god-awful lonely when she was spending all her time with that green-haired bastard, without a single word of reassurance for him. He was still holding out though, because he trusted her, and yes, he loved her, godammit…but he still wanted to hear it from _her_, and with every day that passed without even a glance in his direction, a growing tension wound itself tighter and tighter in his heart as he waited in stolid silence.

Now he sat at one of the long tables facing the stage and lazed about, trying to pretend that he had nothing better to do with his time than waste it here at the Guild. After all, it wasn't like he was _spying_ on them or anything, just watching them out of the corner of his eye while they puzzled over another stupid piece of paper on the table in front of them. Levy's brow was knit in intense concentration and she talked fast and low and earnest, although he couldn't hear what she was saying, seated across the room as he was, but whatever it was made Fried's eyes narrow thoughtfully, and he nodded and started to collect the loose papers and books, stacking them neatly into Levy's bag while she held it open for them, talking enthusiastically all the while.

They got up and made their way towards the exit, and Gajeel waited, a terrible hope blooming in his heart that Levy would see him and run to him and throw her arms around him, and all his moody brooding would be vindicated, but instead, she linked her arm casually with Fried's, looking upwards at him with something akin to adoration as she continued her rambling monologue. Fried's eyes went wide with surprise, but he didn't shake her off. Instead, he leaned back a bit and smiled, looking down at her with quiet tenderness, and it was as if the floor had fallen away underneath him as a terrible hurt splintered its way across his too-tight heart.

That was it. He couldn't take this anymore.

He turned and stormed out of the Guild, heedless of anyone in his way. He didn't see Mira's stricken face as she saw the same thing.

* * *

It ground on his nerves, thrummed angrily through his veins like spreading poison. It made him want to rip things apart, to uproot trees and create devastated clearings of splintered wood and dead creatures in the forest. Every time he saw Levy's empty seat, his head would swivel automatically to the matching empty seat by the bar, then to Mirajane's dejected face, and his vision would stain red with rage. His heart pounded furiously, a straining, clutching rhythm against his ribs and he didn't know whether to scream or laugh at the absurdity of this directionless, unfocused rage.

Mirajane's unusual behavior and Gajeel's particularly dark mood didn't go unnoticed by the rest of the Guild either. It was actually pretty hard to ignore, with Gajeel destroying any inanimate object or person that had the misfortune to be in his way.

After Gajeel had sent his fifth consecutive mage to the hospital, Natsu finally took a perilous seat next to him at the bar, completely ignoring the black aura of death that hung perpetually around him nowadays.

"Looks like someone's jeeaalooous~" he sang blithely, patting Gajeel cheerily on the back.

Gajeel's Iron Dragon Roar destroyed the entire row of bar stools to his right, and sent Natsu flying unconscious into the wooden railings on the second floor in a huge splintering of broken wood and steel shrapnel. Mirajane didn't even blink as her hair was swept across her blank face, swirling about her shoulders in a white cloud from the force of the gale-force roar.

"I'M NOT FUCKING JEALOUS!" Gajeel roared, slamming his fists onto the wooden bar and creating two distinct fist-shaped craters. "WHAT THE FUCK IS THERE TO BE JEALOUS OF?"

He glowered viciously at the silent guild members before storming out, slamming the door behind him so brutally that one hinge snapped clean off. The door held, to everyone's relief, and then Natsu dropped like a rock from the destroyed railing, and the resultant thump knocked the overwhelmed door right off its frame, leaving it sagging crazily in the wake of Gajeel's destruction (again).

Mirajane hadn't even moved from her position at the bar. She might as well have turned into one of Evergreen's stone statues. Sighing, Laki got up and started to repair the damage with her Wood-Make magic, Lucy and Lisanna helping her gather the destroyed wood and dump it outside.

"Jealous." Droy mumbled past the bandages that plastered his face and torso.

"Definitely jealous," Jet agreed, clutching his crutches as best he could with all four limbs in casts.

"A MAN IS ALLOWED TO BE JEALOUS SOMETIMES!" Elfman shouted, one arm and a leg done up in plaster.

Wakaba nodded along with them, unable to speak in his full-body cast, opting instead to puff out "Jealous bastard" in smoke that drifted lazily over their heads.

* * *

After he trashed his way out of the guild, Gajeel stormed his way back to a particular clearing in the forest that he had learned was very good for taking his anger out. Clambering into the heavy branches of his favorite tree, he sat fuming in silence, his eyes huge and murderous. He didn't even notice Pantherlily as the Exceed swooped silently in to land in the branches above his head.

"Don't you think you're overdoing it a little?"

Gajeel's head snapped up like a hawk's, his pupils dilating wildly, fangs bared in a reflexive snarl. He relaxed marginally when he saw Lily, but sneered at Lily's displeased scowl.

"Those fucking…they don't know what the fuck they're talking about," he snarled, crossing his arms and sitting back so hard against the tree that it shook, leaves and twigs raining down wildly around them.

"They don't? Really? Because I think that they've got the right idea, with the way you're acting, Kurogane."

Before Lily could blink, Gajeel was in his face, anger radiating off of him in palpable, dangerous waves.

"How am I acting, huh? Why don't you come out and say it too? You fucking high and mighty…"

Gajeel tore away before he could say something he'd regret later, dropping back to his original seat with his back to Lily. The Exceed watched impassively as Gajeel's shoulders swelled in a huge breath of anger, knowing that Gajeel was trying hard to master his rage. He was actually doing a commendable job, since if he was anything like how he'd been in Phantom, the mages he'd picked fights with would be dead instead of injured, and the Guild would be in angry, tattered splinters instead of in a state of constant repair. Still, that didn't mean that he was allowed to take his anger out on his own Guildmates because he was too cowardly to actually confront Levy, he thought with a snort.

"You're acting like a child. A _jealous_ child, whose favorite toy just got taken awa-"

"SHE'S NOT A FUCKING TOY!" Gajeel roared, the sheer force of his voice sending all the birds within a half-mile radius flapping away in alarm. Lily didn't even blink.

"She might as well be, with how possessive you're acting right now."

"I don't have to listen to your bullshit," Gajeel snarled, leaping out of the tree and stalking away.

"You're right, you don't!" Lily called after him, "but it might do you some good! I doubt that it's really as bad as you think!"

Gajeel didn't even deign to turn around, continuing his angry trek towards his house, shoulders set stiff with rage. Sighing, Lily turned around as Happy and Charle peeked out of the branches behind him.

"He's really angry," Happy said, shivering with fear.

"Such a brute," Charle sniffed. Lily shot her a flat glare and she turned, tail lowering in silent apology. She continued in a more reasonable tone. "If only he would talk to her instead of resorting to such stone-age tactics, he might get further."

Lily shook his head. "You think he doesn't know that?"

"Then why doesn't he?" Charle asked. "It's not that hard."

"Not for you." Lily frowned. "Not for you, but Gajeel's a stubborn bastard."

"Aye…" Happy murmured in agreement.

Lily pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. "C'mon, let's try and talk some life into Mira. It's hard seeing her like that."

The other two exceed made soft sounds of agreement, and they were gone in a whisper of wings.

* * *

"Mirajane," Lily greeted, swooping down to sit next to her. It was a warm, lazy afternoon, and the Guild was mostly empty, the Main Hall abandoned in favor of the pool outside with a few mages lazing about in the downstairs game room. Mira didn't even look up as Lily alighted next to her, just continued staring blankly at nothing, face cupped in both hands.

"Mira," Lily said kindly, patting her on the shoulder to catch her attention. She twitched and broke out of her trancelike state to look at him, but her beautiful blue eyes were shaded dark with sadness.

"Oh! Lily, I'm sorry, I didn't even notice you there! I've been so absentminded lately…" She bustled to life, grabbing an Exceed-sized mug and heading towards the taps.

"I know," he said gently. "That's actually what I wanted to talk to you about."

Her eyes went blank again, and he put a paw over her still hand. "Fried," he said, keeping his voice gentle but firm. Mira's lip trembled, and her hand under his paw closed into a fist, but she didn't say anything.

"Why won't you talk to him, Mira?"

Without warning, Mira threw down the cup she was holding and grabbed him and Lily was fighting to breathe past the crush of her breasts and _oh god how had this happened?_ She was crying, he realized dimly, and he instantly felt guilty because he realized that she must have been holding her tears back for a long time now, and his question must have been the last straw.

"I-I don't know what he'll say and it scares me and oh Lily what should I do? I'm scared! I'm so scared of his answer!" She wept quietly, pressing her face into the top of his head.

Lily struggled out of her arms with difficulty – _men would be happy to die like that_, he thought ruefully, but he wasn't a man, he was an Exceed, and he was on a mission. He patted Mira's hair gingerly as she wept into her hands.

"Mira, please calm down. I'm sure it's not what you think it is. If you would just talk to him, I'm sure that you would find out what's going on."

"W-what if it really is…" She burst into tears again, and threw her arms around him. Lily wheezed and wondered whether it would be prudent to transform into his larger form just to avoid being crushed by overemotional girls. Deciding against it, he allowed Mira to weep into his fur, knowing that the salt would crust and dry and he'd have to shower later. He sighed forlornly. And this was only the start!

Luckily for him, Happy and Charle swooped down to support him right then, landing on either side of Mira and patting her until her crying slowed. She sniffled and hugged all three cats to her. They exchanged miserable looks. No one liked seeing Mira like this.

"I-I just don't want to be hurt," she explained through gasping breaths, "and if not asking him means not getting hurt, then I won't ask, not until he's ready to talk to me."

Lily nodded silently, anger building slowly in his chest. This had to stop. He gave Charle and Happy a look and flicked his eyes outwards, hoping that they'd understand his intent. They both nodded, and Lily untangled himself from the intertwined limbs and paws, leaving Charle and Happy to comfort Mirajane while he took off in search of Fried and Levy, resentment simmering slowly underneath his whiskers.

When he finally caught sight of the duo from the air, they were strolling about town, taking a study break, and both of them had ice cream cones from the local parlor. Fried was eating his mechanically but Levy was laughing and jabbering away at him, her ice cream already half-melted. For a moment, Lily felt the same rage as Gajeel grip him. Did they honestly not see how bad this looked? Could anybody actually be that inconsiderate? He took off towards them with a blast of speed, zooming down to land behind them.

"You two."

Both Levy and Fried turned to see Lily behind them, arms crossed, tail stiff with anger.

"Lily!" Levy cried in surprise. Fried just nodded at him coolly. Levy knelt down to greet him brightly. "What are you doing here, Lily? Do you want some ice cream?"

If Lily hadn't had a firm grip on his self-control, he would have knocked the stupid matching ice cream cones right out of their hands, but he refrained and settled for taking off in a burst of Aera, zooming angrily around their heads with enough force to whip their hair crazily in the resulting wind. He didn't stop until Fried trapped him in a rune box, and even from there, he glowered angrily at the two mages.

"Lily…what's wrong?" Levy asked, concern clouding her features as she picked herself off the ground. Fried offered her a hand up and Lily strained with rage against the unyielding walls of the rune trap. _How could she honestly not know?_

"_YOU'RE _what's wrong!" He finally yelled, unable to hold back his anger. "Can't you see what you're doing to him?"

"W-what?" Levy looked confused and hurt. "I don't understand?"

"Him! Fried! You've been with Fried constantly for the past week, without saying a single word to Gajeel about it!"

"What's wrong with that? Fried's just tutoring me in Rune theory, and –"

Lily cut her off with an impatient swipe of his paw. "That's not what it looks like, especially not to Gajeel! Especially when you're giggling and chatting and hugging like, like –" He cut off, stuttering in fury before rallying to continue. "It looks like you're ignoring him to spend time with Fried, and he's _hurting_ and it's because of _you_!"

"And you," he turned to fix Fried with a venomous glare. "Don't tell me that you haven't noticed Mira fading every time you leave?" His voice rose to a roar. "You should be _ashamed_ of yourself!"

Levy's eyes were bright with tears, one hand over her mouth in consternation. "I-I didn't think–"

"That's right!" Lily hissed angrily. "You didn't _think_! But that doesn't mean you can't fix things! Go find Gajeel. You'll be lucky if he stays put long enough to listen to you!"

Levy took off without a further word, tossing her ice cream in a trash bin and tearing off in the direction of Gajeel's house. Lily watched her run, his anger cooling into dismay. He hadn't meant to be so frank with either of them, but seeing them all buddy-buddy with each other while their loved ones suffered had brought out his spiteful anger, but if this whole stupid misunderstanding could be cleared without any further trouble, it would be worth it.

Turning to Fried, he tapped the rune barrier expectantly, and it dissipated as Fried drew his hand down. He looked miserable and shamefaced, and he bowed stiffly to Lily before drawing his sword. Lily tensed in surprise, eyes tracking the methodical upward arc of the blade.

"Fried, what are you doing?"

Fried grasped the long, hanging end of his ponytail and drew it out in front of him. "I am making my amends," he said, raising his rapier high.

"Wait, stop!" Lily was barely able to prevent Fried from chopping off his ponytail, swooping over in the nick of time to catch the hilt of Fried's rapier and haul it away from his hair.

"Put your sword away, you idiot!" He roared, his voice surprisingly loud for someone so small, and Fried jolted out of his self-hatred with a start. Lily grabbed the rapier as Fried's fingers went slack, and he pulled the weapon away from the runeweaver, flying to a safe distance. Fried looked lost as he stared at his hands, and Lily sighed angrily, feeling like he was dealing with a particularly sensitive recruit back in his Captain days.

"Cutting your hair off won't help anybody," he sighed, fluttering over to Fried's shoulder. He offered Fried the hilt of his rapier back hesitantly, and gave a relieved sigh as Fried sheathed the sword slowly. Flapping so that he was face-level with the mage, Lily spread his paws placatingly.

"Talk to Mirajane. Explain yourself and she _will_ understand, because she loves you."

Fried twitched with surprise and flushed before nodding and turning away. Catching himself, he turned on his heel to face Lily again and bowed deeply.

"Thank you, Pantherlily, for showing me the error of my actions," he said tightly, and Lily winced at the stiff formality in his voice, nodding back.

"No need for thanks. Just go and talk to Mira. Seeing her back to normal will be thanks enough for all of us."

Fried nodded, making a signal in the air, and then he was gone in a whisper of runes.

With a groan, Lily dissipated his Aera and let himself drop to the ground. _What a mess!_ He felt like the villain in this whole story, making Levy and Mira cry, antagonizing Gajeel and berating Fried. He shook his head angrily. Why were these people so stupid with their emotions? He saw Charle and Happy pass overhead, spiraling down to land next to him.

"Are you all right?" Charle asked cautiously, at the same time Happy yelled "Did you talk to them?"

Lily sat up and nodded.

"I'm fine. Hopefully they will be too."

Charle and Happy offered him a paw and he took both, grunting as they hauled him to his feet. He patted both their shoulders, a faint smile growing on his face.

"Now let's get back to the Guild and see if all my flashy yelling helped any."

* * *

Levy ran the entire way to Gajeel's house, berating herself the entire way there.

Oh god! How could she have been so stupid? No wonder Gajeel had been avoiding her this entire week! She hadn't thought that it was anything more than one of his occasional surly moods, but – Lily's voice came back, cracking with anger - _he's hurting and it's because of you_! – and she sobbed weakly into one hand. She skidded into the clearing in front of his house and flew up the three stairs to pound frantically on the bolt-covered door.

"Gajeel! Gajeel! Please open the door! I need to talk to you! Gajeel, please!" To her relief, the door opened a crack, and she threw herself against the iron monstrosity. It didn't budge, not with Gajeel's weight blocking it firmly on the other side, and she strained and puffed for a good minute before falling against the door and acknowledging that she wasn't going to be able to do this by force. Instead, she peered desperately through the thin crack, trying to pierce the darkness. A single, slitted red eye glared darkly out at her and she brought her face close, pressing herself urgently to the door.

"Gajeel," she murmured, "Gajeel, will you please let me in?"

He hissed something angry and his face disappeared from the door and she jammed her fingers into the doorjamb before he could slam it in her face. He caught the heavy metal edge a second away from crushing her fingertips and snarled darkly at her.

"Leave me the _fuck_ alone."

"Gajeel…" Her voice had gone soft with tears and his iron heart faltered pathetically before he gritted his teeth and piled a wall of steel behind it to shore it up. He wasn'tgoing soft, dammit, he _wasn't_. He pried her fingers out of the door and flung them away from him spitefully.

"Don't you have an appointment with your new best friend?" he sneered before slamming the door shut with a clang like a death knell.

Levy rested her forehead against the ironclad front door and bit her lip and wept silently, unaware that on the other side, Gajeel was doing the same, eyes dry and teeth gritted as he fought the desperate hurt that raged blindly where his heart used to be.

* * *

After talking with Pantherlily, Charle and Happy, Mirajane couldn't deny that she'd been neglecting her duties as of late. She took in the tower of unwashed dishes and cutlery piled high in the sink and heaved a sigh.

"Honestly…nothing gets done around here without me," she grumbled, taking note of the depleted stock of food and drink. She put her hands on her hips and gave dirty dishes and supply cabinet alike a fierce glare before deciding to restock supplies first. Humming quietly to herself, she made her way towards the storage cabinet under the stairs, composing a mental checklist of items to look for.

As she was rummaging through the assorted boxes, a magic circle drew itself silently in the air behind her and Fried stepped out, dissipating the rune circle with a sigh and flushing at the sight of Mirajane's bottom in the air as she reached down to grab a new batch of napkins.

"Mira." The voice came abruptly behind her and Mirajane whirled in surprise to see Fried.

Her mouth instantly set into a tense line, and her hands tightened on the bag of napkins until it nearly burst. She walked towards him with her armful of supplies, head held high, though her chin trembled. He blocked her path, looking just as miserable as she did.

"Let me pass," she said, her voice shaking.

"Mira, please, hear me out…"

She stomped once on the floor, her voice rising to a scream. "Let me pass!"

"Mira." He held out both hands in supplication, and her lip trembled helplessly and with nothing else to do, she started throwing things at him. He ducked and dodged the flying cutlery and packaged napkins, and finally whispered a word to disappear in a flash of runes. Mira paused, startled, and then Fried appeared directly behind her, grabbing her arms and holding them tight. She screamed in surprise and anger, but he held on, gripping both her wrists grimly as she tried to fight her way free. After a brief struggle, she stopped, panting slightly with exertion, and only then did he realize that she was crying silently, huge tears streaming down her face, and guilt pierced him through, sharper than any sword. He rested his chin on her shoulder and closed his eyes as she tried to twitch away from his touch. He waited in terrible silence, with only the sound of her sniffling to break it, waiting for the inevitable question. Finally, her wavering voice broke the heavy atmosphere.

"You. Levy. What - ?" The unspoken question hung in the air like poison, and Fried's mouth twisted into a grim line.

"Levy…" He paused and let out a harsh sigh. "Levy is a bit like the sun. Bright. Irresistible. All flowers in time turn their head to face the sun." Mira sobbed once and turned away, but Fried caught her chin, turning her to look at him. She struggled, tears slipping down her miserable face.

"Levy is bright and kind and smart and she is not you." Mirajane froze, her eyes searching Fried's for an answer, hope swelling small and delicate in her heart. He let go of her wrists to cup her face with both hands. "She is as bright as the sun, but she will never be you. I would never want her to be anything like you."

Mira let out a sob, of relief, of hopes upheld and crushed herself to Fried in a hug. He held her close, fierce, stroked her hair. Finally, her sobs subsided to sniffles and she curled herself against him, emotionally drained. He maneuvered them backwards and settled them gingerly on top of a makeshift couch of beans and wheat flour, arranging Mirajane's long legs more comfortably on his lap. She fiddled with the lapels of his jacket, and he turned to rest his face against her hair.

"Is Levy really like that, Fried?" her voice was quiet but curious, and he took it as a good sign that her healthy taste for gossip was back up and running, so he nodded, twirling a long, white strand of her hair with one finger.

"Yes. Perhaps that is why Kurogane Gajeel is so drawn to her. He is like a moth to her flame, and he is her endless shadow. They are hopeless without each other."

Mira nodded, then giggled weakly. "You mean they're perfect for each other."

Fried smiled and quietly touched his lips to her forehead. "Yes. That is exactly what I meant."

* * *

Gajeel had escaped to a promontory overlooking the Guild near the edge of the Magnolia forest. He came here often when he needed to think or when he needed his solitude, and right now he needed both. He was so caught up in his own guilt and anger that he didn't notice Levy as she came up behind him, resting her hand silently on a thick tree trunk as she watched him, head tilted and eyes tender.

He jolted back into reality as she sat down quietly next to him, eyes downcast. Every muscle tensed and his finely-honed instincts screamed at him to run, _runrightNOW_-

"Please don't run."

Her voice was deliberately conversational and he froze, her words turning him to stone. He eyed her nervously as she tugged at her skirt, flinching at her broken whisper.

"I'm sorry." She fiddled with her fingers, nervously smoothing her dress across her knees before continuing. "I'm – I'm, oh Gajeel. I didn't mean to be so stupid and I – I _hurt_ you, and, and... I'm so sorry, Gajeel!"

She sniffled, voice breaking, but composed herself and shifted onto her knees in front of him, thumb and forefinger of both hands forming a perfect triangle on the ground. _Ohgod what was she doing_ - His mouth went bone-dry as she _knelt_, touching her forehead to the ground, her beautiful hair tumbling over her shoulders, dragging in the dirt.

"Stop that," he said instantly. She stayed where she was, and he reached out to grab her shoulder and yank her upright, unable to breathe past the lump in his throat.

"_Stop that,"_ he commanded again, more insistently, shaking her until she straightened. She looked away, biting her lip and he caught the brilliant flash of tears sliding down her face as she blinked rapidly to clear her eyes, and his heart contracted into a painful fist.

"Don't…don't _ever _do that again. You've…there's nothing to apologize for," he muttered stiffly. She sniffed, swiping at her eyes, and he looked away awkwardly, feeling like a complete and utter asshole.

"Don't cry," he said, reaching out instinctively to brush away her tears, but he froze, hand still extended before jerking back, practically burning with shame. He didn't have any right to touch her. He turned to leave, but she _knew_ and reached out, catching his face with her fingertips.

He wavered, caught helplessly in his own weakness, and then she was cupping his jaw with both hands, holding his head to her heart and he was leaning into her, completely and hopelessly drawn by her. She wrapped both arms around his neck, wound her hands into his hair and he let out a shuddering sigh as he gripped her fierce and close, pressed his forehead into the warm curve of her neck and shoulder. God, he'd missed this.

She stroked him until he gentled against her, the tension in his neck and shoulders draining away at the familiar, comforting warmth of her hand circling the base of his neck, her thumb smoothing along the tense muscle and skin. He held her to him like she would disappear if he let her go, unwilling to admit just how deeply his jealousy had cut him. So maybe he was a little possessive, so what? She was his whole goddamn _heart_.

"I was a dick." He finally managed, his voice muffled against her shoulder.

"Why were you so jealous of Fried?"

Anger flared in his chest just hearing the name, but he quelled it ruthlessly, pushed it down until it raged weakly behind an impenetrable iron wall. He wouldn't let his undirected anger hurt her.

"I'm not…I'm not fucking jealous," he mumbled.

"Then why were you acting so strange?"

"I-I dunno."

She tilted his head, turning his face to hers and kissed him lightly on the lips and he caught a flash of her closed eyes, eyelashes feather-soft against her cheek as his heart spasmed against his ribs.

"You didn't trust me?" She asked quietly, and now that they were face to face, all his anger faded and dimmed to ash in the face of the absolute honesty and love in her eyes.

"I…It's not…" He stuttered, feeling clumsy and stupid and completely lost, because now that she was in his arms, everything he'd done in the last week seemed downright idiotic.

She gripped his face firmly, reined him in for a fierce kiss, and his head spun as he drew her close, kissing her back with wild abandon. She broke apart far too soon for his liking, holding his face firmly back as he moved forwards for another, and he stopped short, feeling dirty for hurting her friends (again). Sighing, she threaded her hands through his hair, rested her forehead against his, and he was undone, caught in the overwhelming rush of his emotions.

"You know, Gajeel Redfox, that I love you, right?" She murmured in a tone so matter-of-fact that she might have been discussing the weather. His heart reeled dizzily in his chest. He could have died then and there, and things would have been all right. He had to swallow three times before he could get his voice to work properly and choke out a thick "Yeah…"

"You also know then, that no one could ever replace you, right?"

He blushed angrily, turning to hide his face against her neck, muttering something incoherent. Levy smiled, pressing her cheek against his hair before continuing, her tone mischievous.

"Also…green hair? Really? You have such little faith in my taste, Gajeel."

He choked on his laughter and held her fiercely to him.

"Yeah. It didn't match at all. You guys looked like a fucking color wheel."

She giggled. 'Yeah, green hair is definitely weird, but black? She eased her hands into his hair again, tangling her fingers in and tugging lightly as she smiled at him. "Black is perfect," she finished, before pulling him close for a kiss, and Gajeel felt any remnant of jealousy fade away because in this perfect moment she was _his _and his alone, and no one could ever take that away from him.

* * *

**Omake**

"How long do you think it'll take for them to get back together?" Cana asked Gray slyly, casting her eyes over at Fried and Levy, who were huddled up in the corner with several arcane-looking textbooks. Gray considered Gajeel's sullen glower and Mirajane's blank face and winced.

"Dang. I dunno. A long time?"

"Heh. I'll take you up on that. I say they get back together by the end of this week."

Gray gave Cana a skeptical glance. "No way."

She smiled smugly in return. "Five thousand says yes way."

Gray smirked, his competitive fire rising. "Fine. You're on, but you'll be five thousand jewels down."

She chuckled and took a deep drink. "You wish, Mr. Exhibitionist. You wish. Might wanna check your pants."

Gray looked down and cursed, making a last-minute grab at his boxers right before they slid off. Juvia, in her hiding place behind a long trestle table, bit her hanky in distress, face flushed. So close!

A week later, Gray was the sullen one as he handed a crowing Cana a bundle of jewel, trying not to look at her smug face.

"Still," she said, considering Gajeel's exhausted face and the dark circles under Levy's eyes. "They must be having some DAMN good make-up sex for them to look like that. It's been…what, a week and a half already?"

Gray's face morphed into an indescribable expression of utter disgust and he fled, yelling "Don't say that kind of disgusting stuff!" He ran headlong into Natsu, who punched him in the face without a further word, sending him flying headfirst into Erza's chestplate, and then, inevitably, the rest of the bar was embroiled in their fight, degenerating into a ball of flailing arms and legs.

Cana chuckled as she watched Gajeel and Levy turn their heads and share a single, knowing glance before slipping under the table, and she laughed uproariously before turning and socking Macao in the face, joining in on the fight with good-natured (drunken) gusto.

It looked like things were back to normal.

* * *

**A/N** - Holy crap this took freaking FOREVER to finalize. I've had this one on the backburner as one of the very first stories I ever drafted, and I only just managed to finish it up for real recently. agh! But it's finally done.

My apologies for the sudden decrease in updates for both TSPH and Ironbound (although I do admit I'm slacking a bit on TSPH. That chapter just does not want to be written!). I hit a pretty bad creative block in terms of both art and writing and it's only recently started to let up, but everyone who's reviewed and added my stories to their favorites and alerts, you have my absolute and sincere gratitude. I'm so grateful that you guys take the time to read/review/favorite anything that I make and I really appreciate everyone who enjoys the work I put out. _Thank you_, and I hope I can continue to make works that you'll all enjoy!

Argh. I'm not the happiest with how I characterized Levy in this story, but I needed her to be one of those people who is comfortable with easily touching those around her (think of that one enthusiastic friend/person who hugs everyone/casually hooks your arm in theirs while walking) for this to work right. So if you thought she was a bit too touchy-feely with Fried, I feel the same way too blaaaahh.


	9. Ten Fingers

**Ten Fingers**

As the Raijinshuu slowly integrated with the rest of the Guild, it quickly came to everyone's attention that they knew _absolutely nothing_ about the mysterious trio other than the fact that they had followed Laxus around and were ridiculously strong. Now, with Laxus gone and the three making awkward overtures towards their fellow mages, everyone wanted to know a bit more about their personal lives (because Fairy Tail members were nothing if not nosy and prone to gossip.)

That was why when a Raijinshuu bonding party sleepover was announced, it was enthusiastically and unanimously agreed upon, and somehow, everyone had come to the conclusion that it was to take place at Lucy's house. Her scream when she heard this news seemed to echo all the way to the mountains, and she keeled over in a dead faint. Natsu proceeded to try and roast her unconscious body back to awareness, and Happy joyfully toasted a fish head over the smoke. Everyone else turned back to their conversations.

Then, it came to the question of just what exactly they were going to do during this gathering. Natsu suggested a potluck, and Gajeel agreed to provide the steel, and it seemed like it might work, but then everyone remembered – oh yeah, practically none of them could cook besides Elfman and Mira, and no one was looking forward to a meal of fire and scrap metal. Juvia breathily suggested spin-the-bottle while making googly eyes at Gray, but people weren't willing to get THAT close to the Raijinshuu yet, and Gray edged uncomfortably away from Juvia, who was gradually inching closer with bright eyes.

Lucy suggested the perennial favorite, truth-or-dare, but nobody wanted to find out just how far people were willing to go with the dares (everyone looked leerily at Natsu and Erza), and the Raijinshuu weren't comfortable with the idea of awkward questions about the past, so when Cana helpfully suggested an innocent-sounding game called 10 fingers, everyone mulled it over and eventually agreed. What could go wrong with such a childish-sounding name? It was probably some sort of glorified hopscotch or patty-cake, they figured.

So that night, Lucy sighed as she opened her front door again and again, allowing pajama-clad guild members into her house. Soon, it became clear that her modest-sized (at best) living room was going to have to get very cozy to accommodate all 15 people who had showed up, but Erza pronounced it a wonderful opportunity to get closer to each other. People squirmed uncomfortably, elbows in stomachs and knees poking into ribs, but no one was going to argue with Erza, especially not when she looked so terrifyingly splendid in her lacy pajamas.

Cana smiled from her uncrowded vantage point on the couch next to Erza, rubbing her hands together gleefully.

"So, let's get this party started! First, let me explain the rules of the game." She held out her hands straight in front of her, all 10 fingers up. "Basically, I have my fingers out like this, and then I say something that I've never done before, and if any of you _have _done it, then you lose a finger, like this." She tucked her thumb under her palm, leaving her with 9 fingers. People murmured in agreement. It seemed easy enough. "But-" Cana's voice cut smugly through the air again. "Tonight, we'll be playing the 10 fingers Sex version."

Everyone went silent to stare at her. Fried coughed to hide his choke, his face red under his green hair before asking, "Did I hear that right, Cana? Did you just say…sex?"

Cana nodded. "Everyone agreed to the game beforehand, right? And isn't this is a great way to learn more about each other?"

Mages sat dumbfounded with their hands slack in front of them as they tried not to look at each other. Nobody was really feeling up to divulging their sexual habits in front of their friends, but Cana steamrolled blithely over the sudden flood of objections."All right then! I'll start! We go clockwise! Everyone shut up and get your hands up!" She narrowed her eyes and stared fiercely out, daring anyone to object, and gradually, grumbling, the ragtag circle complied. Cana smiled victoriously, looking around her little ring of victims and noting the guilty, red-faced glances that people were shooting each other. She should start things off in style, then. She caught Levy's ferocious blush, and smirked at Gajeel's guilt-ridden expression next to her as they exchanged glances. Well then…

"I've never had sex with a dragonslayer," she announced brightly, and was infinitely pleased to see both Levy and Lucy lose a finger.

Lucy, people expected more or less, but everyone stared at Levy, who looked like she wanted to sink into the floor as she mumbled something inaudible, shrinking in on herself. All eyes turned to Natsu, who shook his head vigorously, leaving only – Gajeel, who looked ridiculous as he tried to hide behind Levy, ducking his head and refusing to meet the incredulous stares from all around them.

Before the poor Iron Dragon could be eviscerated by the righteous rage of overprotective fairy boys (some goddess must have been looking over his shoulder, making sure that Jet and Droy were absent from the party), Cana cut in sharply, with a falsetto "Erza's next~!"

Erza, who was sitting next to Cana on the couch, shot her friend a pointed frown before saying "_I've_ never had sex with anyone a lot older than me."

Cana lost her smile instantly, a vein throbbing in her forehead as she hissed, "Please clarify how much older."

Erza's smile was sly as she stroked her chin. "Let's say...10 years." Blushing and furious at being caught in her own trap, Cana was forced to put down one finger.

Lucy was next and she chewed her lip thoughtfully, considering her nine fingers and glancing at her bedroom before saying "Well, I guess I've never had sex in a public location."

Gajeel gritted his teeth, a blush creeping up his neck. "What the hell do you mean by public location?" he choked out. Lucy tapped her chin thoughtfully.

"Umm, I guess any place outside that's accessible to the general public? Like…like an elevator, or a public restroom or a camping ground? I don't know!" she finished feebly.

Elfman glanced down guiltily. "D-does the Guild count?" and Mirajane turned to look at her little brother, her mouth dropping open in surprise. Lucy thought for a bit and people squirmed uncomfortably all around the circle, waiting on her decision.

"No, the Guild doesn't count, since it's inside, and mostly for Guild members anyways," she finally announced, and an audible sigh went up around the circle as quite a few people looked markedly relieved, but Gajeel blushed as he put down his first finger, as did a silent Levy beside him. Elfman looked the absolute picture of guilt as he lost his first finger, and Evergreen put down one prim, perfectly manicured nail as well, disdainfully ignoring the stares and speculative whispers that sprang up.

Now it was Levy's turn, and with two fingers already down so early in the game, things weren't looking up for her. She swallowed tightly before speaking in a voice so small that everyone had to lean forward to hear.

"I-I've never been in a threesome before."

With perfectly straight faces, all three of the Raijinshuu put down a finger, and Cana gaped at Erza, looking around wildly as the Strongest Team of Lucy, Natsu, Gray and Erza all lost fingers.

"Oh my god!" she gasped. "I knew there was something funny going on between you guys! What kind of relationship do you have with each other anyways?" They simply looked at each other and shrugged, sly grins sliding perfectly into place.

Shooting poisonous glares around the room, Gajeel stammered and had to try two times before he finally got his statement out.

"I-I-I've only had sex with one person before." He managed, ducking his head again as everyone gave him and Levy knowing stares. Juvia cooed, and Gajeel's _ears_ turned red as he sent a silent plea for some kind of Ice Age or volcano eruption or meteor strike or a simultaneous combination of all those events together to happen _right now_. What he didn't expect was to have _everyone_ except Elfman, Juvia and the two gunners lose fingers.

"Seriously?" he muttered, looking around the circle. "_Seriously_?" he squawked, wilting, as Levy, biting her lip guiltily, lost her third finger.

"Umm…let's talk about this later?" she asked, blushing right up to the roots of her blue hair. He nodded dumbly, looking thunderstruck, and Levy, taking pity on him, shifted close until their legs were touching along the side. Everyone coughed and pretended not to notice, hiding their grins.

Natsu, who was still doing quite well with 8 fingers left, spoke up.

"I've never had sex on a moving...vehicle."

He started turning green even as he was saying it and began choking while Gray smacked him uproariously on the back. Levy and Gajeel shared a glance, and with matching red faces, each put down another finger. They were the only ones. Lucy was staring at her best friend like she'd never seen her before. "W-who are you?" she whispered, her eye twitching. Levy hung her head, letting her hair fall over her eyes. "P-please don't judge, Lu-chan."

His turn up, Gray shrugged easily. "I've never had sex while drunk."

No one was surprised to see Cana lose a finger, and Fried and Evergreen weren't too shocking either, but Mirajane gasped as her little brother sheepishly put down his second finger.

Juvia wiggled uncomfortably, staring at her 10 pristine fingers.

"Um. Juvia supposes that she has never been called loud…during." She blushed helplessly and brought both hands to her face to hide it, so she didn't see as Erza, Gajeel and Cana all lost fingers. Elfman was a surprise though, and Mira gave him a scandalized look, tears brimming in her beautiful eyes as Evergreen lost her fourth finger, shooting a smirk at the white-haired bartender as she folded the traitorous finger inwards.

Mira sighed as her turn came up. Wiggling all ten of her fingers, she puffed her cheek out as she thought. Brightening, she announced. "Here's one that no one should have, I've never had sex in a jail cell!"

Erza turned as red as her hair, and gritting her teeth, she lost her fourth finger as the entire circle boggled at her, murmuring. Mira blushed and stammered her apologies before trailing into the thick silence caused by her awkward revelation.

Elfman coughed before sitting up in a very manly fashion to shout, "A man does not have sex with anyone on his team!" The entire circle groaned and made assorted noises of disgust, and Gray managed, "That's because your team is your older and younger sister, you idiot!"

The Raijinshuu looked at each other again and shrugged, all putting down one finger, and by now, no one was surprised to see Lucy, Natsu, Gray and Erza lose fingers either. They weren't expecting Bisca and Alzack to sheepishly tuck their fingers in.

"Really?" Lucy giggled.

"_Finally_," Cana broke in, rolling her eyes.

Bisca, still stammering from being outed, was barely audible past her embarrassed stuttering. "I-I've, well shoot…I've never um, ain't never had – never done it before inside the Guild!" she finished, saying the last part so quickly that Erza had to translate for her.

Gray winced, and Juvia squeaked in horrified embarrassment as she lost her first finger. Gajeel and Levy shared a shamefaced glance before putting their fingers down silently, and Mirajane and Fried followed suit, hoping that no one was watching them. Evergreen rolled her eyes with an annoyed sigh as she put her finger down, and she glared at Elfman until he did the same. The poor man was blushing miserably as everyone else shot them scandalized looks.

Alzack, still blushing from the previous questions, managed to quaver out "I've never used my magic while…while during."

Gray and Juvia looked at each other again and put down their fingers. Natsu groaned.

"Gray! You droopy-eyed bastard! I should have known you would leave the closet all wet and nasty!"

Gray glowered back at him, but their attention was diverted as Levy and Gajeel lost fingers (again) as did Cana, Fried and Elfman. Mirajane looked like she was going to start lecturing her little brother, but she caught herself and blushed thoroughly, putting down a finger herself. Elfman didn't know whether to feel relieved or horrified.

Evergreen hitched her glasses higher with a little sniff. "I've never had sex with someone of the same gender."

She watched as her fellow Thunder Guard members both lost fingers, and rolled her eyes as the Light Team members (again) were forced to put down a finger, but Gajeel's jaw dropped and his eyes bulged as Levy squirmed and put down another finger – that girl really didn't have too many left, did she? And Cana silently lost her sixth finger while a guilty Mirajane quickly stuffed her thumb under her palm.

Bixlow shot Fried a smug look before drawling "I've never had sex in a closet before." His dolls giggled unabashedly, echoing "Closet! Sex! Ooh! Never!" and various permutations of Bixlow's sentence. Lucy stopped looking at her closed palm to give them a leery look – why the heck were those voodoo things here anyways? Fried glowered at his teammate as he lost his _eighth_ finger, but he didn't have much to worry about, since couples all around the circle were losing fingers as well, first a blushing Mirajane, then Gray and Juvia, then finally Levy and Gajeel. They seemed to come to the inevitable conclusion at the same time.

"D-don't tell me…" Fried stammered. "It's…it's the closet under the stairs, where we keep the dried food and cleaning supplies?" Everyone nodded, looking horrorstruck, and a wholesale groan of disgust ran through the entire room as people gagged.

"I've used those mops to clean the bathroom, just so you know!" came Cana's smug voice. The guilty parties ducked their heads in mortified silence, and Bixlow just grinned knowingly before passing his turn to Fried with a dramatic sweep of his arm. Fried glared at him darkly before announcing, with an air of revenge well-served, "I've never given a girl oral before."

Bixlow stuck his tongue out and casually put down his fifth finger, retorting "That's cuz we all know you'd suck at it if you tried. Sore loser."

Fried fumed, his red face a terrible contrast with his green hair, and in the resulting bout of laughter, Lucy, Natsu and Erza shared a glance and hastily jammed their fingers in, hoping not to get noticed, even as Levy and Gajeel did the same. Mirajane was too busy patting Fried's arm comfortingly to notice that her own little brother had, following everyone else's example, quietly put down a finger, as had Cana. The card mage looked around in sudden realization as she realized they'd come full circle.

"Oh wow, that was fast, is it my turn again? Well…I've never been walked in on while having sex."

Elfman squirmed uncomfortably as he lost his seventh finger, and Mira, who was sitting next to him, hid her face in her hands as she began to cry. Evergreen snorted as she lost her ninth finger.

"Get over it, Mirajane, you'll never unsee it," and everyone around the circle blushed at her matter-of-fact tone, and the horrible implication contained within it. Shooting dirty glances at each other, Gray and Natsu lost fingers, as did Juvia and Lucy by extension, and Erza and Gajeel silently put down their respective fingers.

Before Erza could continue with her next question though, a small cough caught her attention.

"Um…"

Everyone gaped at Levy as she held up both closed fists, her face flaming crimson.

"I…I think I won," she mumbled, barely audible over the sound of everyone's jaws hitting the ground. In the silence that followed, a pin drop would have been deafening. And then all hell broke loose as Natsu and Elfman launched themselves at Gajeel, fire pouring out of Natsu's mouth.

"Gajeeel! WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING TO LEVYY?"

Gajeel's face was a horrifying shade of red as he jumped up to meet them. "Shut up! SHUT UP! I haven't been doing anything!"

"Except her, apparently," Cana sniggered, and Levy looked like she wanted the floor to eat her as she covered her face with both hands. Somehow, Elfman's punch and Natsu's flaming kick both missed Gajeel, but they managed to nail Lucy in the head and Erza on the…chest. Erza looked down at her ruined pajamas, now revealing a bit too much skin before standing up, a crackling death aura turning the room black around her as she gritted her teeth. Everyone held their breath for a second, hoping her rage wouldn't break on them, but it was not to be, and in the next second, Erza was exquipping into armor and charging straight at Natsu with a very unladylike roar.

Somehow, (inevitably) it turned into an all-out brawl, and Fried hastily slipped out, Mirajane close behind him. They sat outside in the cool night air and listened to the ruckus from within. Mira laughed and rested her head on his shoulder.

"That was…interesting," she said, smiling.

He snorted, "Interesting isn't the word I would use. Perpetually scarring seems to fit better."

She held up her hands in front of him, five delicate fingers folded in under her palm to make a small fist. "What about you?" she asked. Blushing, he held up his own hands, one fisted and the other with one pitiful finger still remaining. Her eyebrows jumped up. "Oh my goodness. At least I can still lay claim to having _some _dignity." He frowned and swatted at her, and she laughed and deflected his light blows "Kidding! I was just kidding!"

"Ugh," Fried sighed, massaging his temples with both hands. "I have just learned more about our Guild members' sexual habits in this one night than I ever needed to know in an entire _lifetime_. No one needs to be _that _bonded." He shuddered, thinking back to all the perverse admissions he'd been forced to make himself, but damn, the rest of the guild wasn't as clean and squeaky as he'd thought them to be either!

Gray and Ever (his dependent, coolheaded teammate _Ever_!), like him, had only had _one_ finger remaining, while Erza and the Iron Dragonslayer had two. Cana and Lucy had a scant three fingers remaining, while Natsu and Elfman had a slightly more respectable four. Bixlow and his Mira had five and Phantom's rain mage had four, and Fried snorted, half-proud and half-mortified that he'd managed to trounce Bixlow and his flexible tongue so soundly in the sex department. Only those two clueless gunners seemed to have any modicum of respect left, with nine fingers remaining respectively. He looked back at his single index finger, groaned and hid his face in his hands. _How utterly humiliating!_

Mira smiled and scooted closer to Fried, putting her head on his shoulder and cheerfully letting him wallow in his own shame. When he snapped out of it, he'd realize that she didn't care about any of those things, but for now, she listened to his horrified muttering and smiled to herself and waited.

Back inside, Gajeel had finally managed to escape from the furious, indignant attentions of the two overprotective monkeys that were Natsu and Elfman. As he bolted for the open door, he swooped by Levy and threw her easily across one shoulder before making his clean escape. As the turmoil died down, the smoke cleared to reveal Elfman choking a long-senseless Alzack with gusto. Evergreen and Bisca immediately started screaming at the top of their lungs to try and get him to stop, and finally, it was Erza who dealt the Take-Over mage a good clobber over the head that snapped him back to his senses.

"A REAL MAN DOES NOT-! Oh crap…Alzack!" He froze and sheepishly set the unconscious gunner down, quailing under Bisca's smoldering gaze. She stopped suddenly, eyes narrowing as she looked around the room.

"Wait. If that ain't Gajeel, then where the hell is he?"

Everyone murmured and glanced around, but the Iron Dragonslayer was nowhere to be seen. Gray stopped groping about the tangled limbs and bodies all over the floor and sat up, frowning.

"Anyone seen my shirt?"

* * *

Gajeel sneezed once as he made a beeline towards his house. _Hell_ if he was going to stay overnight at that cursed party after what had happened! He wasn't looking forward to Titania's inevitable interrogation, and he wanted to die just_ thinking_ about what she would say to him. He cringed again as Levy battered him over the head, and finally, he skidded to a stop and set her down, yelling over her furious screams and flailing arms and legs.

"Stop! Stop it! Goddamit! It's just me!" She did stop, and removed the random T-shirt that had landed over her eyes during the fray.

"Oh! Oh, Gajeel, why didn't you say so? For some reason, I thought Bixlow was trying to abduct me!" She sighed and lowered herself shakily onto the ground, and he sat down next to her, sneaking sideways glances from time to time. The silence stretched between them for a good minute until Gajeel cleared his throat awkwardly.

"So. Who's the lucky chick?"

Levy blushed deeply and fiddled with her hands. Finally, she nodded faintly. "Um. It's Lu-chan."

Gajeel groaned. "Fuck. Fuckin' knew it. Damn cosplay chick. First she busts up my Guild, then she's stealing my girl? I knew I shoulda taken her out when I had the chance."

"Don't say that!" Levy protested, giving him a push that didn't even budge him. He pushed her back and caught her sharply before it sent her sprawling, yanking her against him with a grin. He looked down at her fondly as she gave him an annoyed glare, trying to struggle out of his tight grip. He held her until she finally gave up and slumped against him with an irritated huff.

"You are _so_ annoying, you know that, Gajeel?"

He buried his face into her hair with a huge grin and a proud "Yes."

She pouted and crossed her arms, and he just grinned and nuzzled her until he felt the tight lines of anger in her back mellow into resignation, then acceptance as she pressed her face into his palm.

"You…you don't mind?" She finally asked, her voice small. He shook his head without the slightest hint of hesitation.

"Nah. Hell if I care. You're here now, aren't you?" She giggled and pushed at his face.

"That's because you kidnapped me."

He snorted a quick "details" before his face turned abruptly serious. "Wait. I…there's no reason for me to worry, right?"

She rolled her eyes at him and wrapped both arms around his neck, indignant. "No! Why would you have to worry? Lu-chan is my friend and you're…you're _you_." He grinned and turned his head to press his lips possessively to her forehead, and she smiled at the cool press of his metal studs.

"Well shit. If that's how you treat your friends, then…" He trailed off suggestively and she giggled and buried her face into his neck.

"Stop that! I treat you _plenty_ well and you know it, Gajeel Redfox! How else do you think I won that dumb game?" He chuckled, deep in his throat and tilted her head to claim her mouth in a fierce kiss. When he pulled back, her eyes were dreamy, lips slightly parted as she looked up at him.

"Yeah. Yeah, I know." He stood up and she squeaked with surprise and clung to him. He hefted her to make her squeak again and continued down the path towards his house, a huge grin on his face. "Still, there were a few things we _didn't_ do that came up, and let's just say" – his voice dropped low to a purr as he pressed his face to the warm curve of her jaw, inhaling deeply – "I've got a few nice ideas."

Levy shrieked with laughter at his wandering lips, and tangled her fingers into his hair. She pulled him back and waggled her eyebrows at him, an uncharacteristic smirk lighting up her eyes. "And who says that I haven't got my own ideas, huh, Gajeel?"

She jerked him hard towards her and kissed him fiercely, and his steps slowed as his mind stuttered to a stop, and he stood with the girl he loved in his arms while she kissed him senseless. When she finally pulled away, Gajeel just stood for a good several seconds, face slack and eyes half-closed with content. Levy finally prodded him in the jaw to get him moving, and he took off with a roar, her exhilarated scream chasing him all the way home.

* * *

**A/N** - Had this one on the backburner for forever, but couldn't fix it up to a point where I liked it enough to post. I still don't really like it, but hopefully it was a fun read. Who doesn't like raunchy 'never-have-I-ever' sex games with our FT charries? I also really hope there aren't numerical discrepancies with the fingers (although I'm sure there are). Too many fingers to keep track of!

Also, this need not be said, but multiple ridiculous pairings abound. Try and guess them all! :D


	10. Palette

**Palette**

She's all the bright colors of sunny days and he's all cool silver and black and every shade of grayscale in between.

When she wraps her arms around him, she starts to cool, the bright blues and oranges bleeding gently into monochrome desaturation. Conversely he begins to warm, the cold steel colors taking on a rosy hue from the brilliance of her warmth.

Their palette is an uneasy riot of color, smudged with vivid shocks of orange, shot through with cool grays and blues. Together, they're a perfect blend of imperfect hues, a fading sunset tinged with hues of silver.

* * *

**A/N:** Ironbound has hit **100** reviews (!), and I'd like to thank each and every one of my reviewers and readers SO, so much. It's such an amazing benchmark for me, and knowing that there are people out there who enjoy my work is such an uplifting and encouraging feeling. Thank you all again for helping me reach this point. I'm grateful for every person who took the time out of their day to read and enjoy the stories and I am especially grateful for those who spare a moment to leave their thoughts and feedback for me. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I hope you enjoyed this drabble! A celebration of 100 words for 100 reviews!


	11. Ice Cream, Indirectly

**Ice Cream, Indirectly**

For some reason, they were having an impromptu party at the lakefront behind the Guild. Someone's birthday or something, he wasn't exactly listening when the Master announced it, but it wasn't as if the idiot fairies _needed _an actual excuse to host a party, complete with excessive food, drink and bare skin. Gajeel snorted, watching various mages making complete asses of themselves trying to impress Mirajane, who merely waved kindly as they flailed in the shallows.

Idiots aside, there were _some_ perks to being a fairy, he supposed. After all, Phantom didn't have its own damn _lake_. His eyes drifted to where Lucy, Erza, Bisca and Lisanna were playing a lively game of beach volleyball, and grinned rather slyly. Plus, the view here wasn't half bad either.

The volleyball game was interrupted abruptly by the welcome arrival of an icecream truck, and everybody abandoned what they were doing in favor of getting some ice cream, Gajeel included. As he elbowed his way liberally through the crowd to push to the front, he managed to snag a little pint of something chocolate with cows on it, tossing a few jewel into the cart and wading his way out of the mess of humanity with some difficulty. It was only after he was clear of the crowd that he realized he'd forgotten to grab a spoon on the way. He turned and looked at the seething mass of hollering mages with disdain and considered which way to angle his Iron Dragon Roar to get rid of most of the crowd and not destroy the truck at the same time. God, that would be such a waste of ice cream. Fortunately, before he could carry through with the action, he caught sight of Levy, on her way back from the Guild with more beach supplies and various kitchenware, and his eyes lit up as he caught sight of the spoon tucked in her cheek. Aha! Perfect.

He ambushed her before she could make her way over to her two goons, stepping directly into her path with his arms crossed. The intimidating effect was a bit spoiled by the innocuously cute container of ice cream held in one hand, but he waved that bit of indignity off as a necessary sacrifice. She stopped short, nearly running into him, and craned her head up to look at him, bewildered.

"Gajeel?" She asked around a mouthful of spoon. He held his hand out imperiously.

"Oi shorty, gimme the spoon."

Her brow furrowed in confusion, but she nodded her chin at him, and he looked at her double armful of supplies and garnered that he should take it himself. Fine. Gingerly, he plucked it from her mouth, and she gave him a slightly confused smile before sidestepping him and continuing on her way. Gleefully clutching the spoon in hand, he made his way back to his towel to find Juvia sitting primly on it, face flushed as she clasped both hands to her heart. He followed her line of sight to see Gray wrestling with Natsu in the shallows and he wrinkled his nose with disgust. The pervert had managed to lose his swimwear. Rolling his eyes, he sat down heavily next to her and (finally!) popped open the container of ice cream for a treat well deserved!

He dug into the chocolate-something-or-other and took a bite and made a rather obscene noise of pleasure. Juvia broke off her lovelorn staring to give him a disgruntled look at the inappropriate sound before doing a sudden double-take.

"Gajeel…" she said hesitantly as he jammed the spoon in his mouth again.

"Yeah?" He replied around the spoonful of metal.

"Didn't Levy-chan use that spoon before giving it to you?" she asked, a peculiar look crossing her face.

"So?" He asked irritably, trying not to eat the spoon right along with the ice cream.

"So it is like…it is like an indirect…" she trailed off and turned to look at Gray suddenly, eyes lighting up, and Gajeel gave an irritated snort at the sudden silence.

"An indirect what?" He finally prompted, yanking the spoon out of his mouth so he could speak properly, giving her an impatient glare.

"It is like an indirect…k-kiss," she mumbled. "Gajeel, Juvia has to go take care of something." And with that, she got up and left, making a beeline towards the ice cream truck and leaving a flabbergasted Gajeel staring at the spoon like it'd bit him. Levy walked by at that moment, headed back towards the ice-cream truck after dropping off her armful of supplies. She cocked her head at Gajeel's horrorstruck expression, confused.

"Gajeel? Is something wrong?"

She didn't expect to be bowled over by his hasty exit as he practically threw her spoon and a container of…ice cream? into her arms and fled, yelling "TakeitIdon'twantitanymore!," face as red as Gray's floating swim trunks.

She got up huffily, sand in her hair and her money strewn all about her, making a face at Gajeel's retreating back and folding her arms crossly before getting up to dust herself off. She looked at the pint of ice cream thoughtfully, back at her spoon and shrugged before brushing off the residual sand and digging in. It would be a waste if _someone _didn't eat it, right? And now she didn't have to pay for her own pint!

From his hiding place behind Bisca and Alzack's beach umbrella, Gajeel flushed a horrible shade of red as he watched her eating _his_ ice cream merrily with that goddamn spoon.

"Indirect fucking kiss my ass!" He muttered furiously, ducking his head and placing both hands over his hot ears. Why the hell did Juvia have to _tell_ him that? His eyes involuntarily tracked the spoon as Levy strolled back towards her towel, counting the number of times it rose and fell. Shit…that was three kisses now…four. He stopped and shook his head wildly. Shit! Why the hell was he thinking about this in terms of kisses?

Discreetly, he broke cover from behind the beach umbrella and followed her back, hunkering ungracefully behind some bushes on the shoreline and grimacing as Jet and Droy greeted her enthusiastically, begging for a bite of her ice cream. For a second, he had to fight the unreasonable urge to burst out of cover, run over, rip the spoon out of her hand and stamp upon it so those two idiots would _never _be able to claim _any_ kind of kiss from her! Fortunately, he didn't have to enact that extreme plan of action as she refused them both firmly, pointing back in the direction of the ice cream truck, clearly telling them to get their own. They trudged off towards the truck, shoulders slumped dejectedly, and Levy grinned fondly at their backs before sitting down on her towel, blissfully alone with her ice cream. Gajeel got up to five more ki-_spoonfuls_ goddamit, of ice cream before he couldn't take it anymore. He marched over and sat down abruptly next to her, trying to ignore what she was wearing, or more accurately, what she _wasn't_ wearing, which was quite a lot.

"Hi, Gajeel," she greeted cautiously, the memory of him bowling her over still fresh in her mind. He snuck a sidelong glance at her, trying not to ogle her swimsuit, which was very small and very white, before clearing his throat.

"C-can you use a different spoon," he asked gruffly, ears burning with embarrassment.

Her brow furrowed in confusion at the unexpected question. "Why? Is something wrong with this one?" She asked, eyeing it with sudden wariness, like it would rear up and bite her.

"I…I used it already," he said, ducking his head and wishing the sand would swallow him.

She looked at him, uncomprehending. "So?" She asked, and he put a hand over his eyes. She didn't know. She was forcing him to say it out loud. God, could this get any more awkward?

"So…um." He made some awkward hand gestures. "So it's like…I used it…and then you used it…" he trailed off, red-faced, hoping she'd get it.

"That's okay," she said brightly. "Unless…you're sick?" She asked suddenly, concern clouding her face.

"YES!" He said loudly, latching onto the line she'd thrown him. "YES. I'm sick." He coughed once, pathetically, just for good measure.

She looked at the ice cream, at the spoon and back at him, face falling. "Oh! But…but I already used it!" She said, obviously worried.

"Yeah. That's why you should get a new one," he said, giving himself a smug mental pat on the back for being so clever.

She paused and then looked at him closely. He twitched under her gaze as she carefully set the ice cream to one side, folding her knees under her and sitting up straight, and then he was trying to backpedal, scrabbling on sand and towel alike as she leaned towards him close, _tooclose_, then her cool hand landed on his forehead and she was comparing her temperature to his, a contemplative look on her face.

"Wow Gajeel…you really are sick, your face is so hot," she said and he nodded enthusiastically, but then she tilted her head confusedly, "and so…red? Gajeel, are you sure you're not just sunburnt?"

"No!" he squawked, trying (failing) to ignore the distracting proximity of her breasts to his face. "No! I'm _sick_, goddamit! So sick I'm dying!"

She looked at him with a wry smile before sitting back down and reaching for her - _his_ ice cream, he corrected mentally and he sighed as she dug back in with enthusiasm.

"I'm sure it's nothing that some ice cream won't fix," she said cheerfully, mouth full. She dug a large glob of ice cream and held the spoon out to him with a smile. "Here! Have some! It's yours after all!"

He stared at the ice cream container, back at the spoon and turned his head away, his blush returning as Juvia's words echoed unnecessarily in the back of his head. "It's like an indirect kiss…kiss…kiss….k-"

"ARRGH FUCK." He said, shaking his head violently to dislodge the echoing voice, startling Levy, who drew back, wondering if she was wrong and maybe Gajeel really _was _sick because he was acting really strange and did he need to see a doctor? Then he sighed heavily and spoke without looking at her.

"I can't use that damn spoon."

"What?" Levy asked, baffled. "Why not? It's just a spoon! If it's because you think you might eat it, that's oka-"

"I can't use it 'cause you used it too," he said, overriding her brusquely as color rose high on his face, spreading slowly down his neck.

"What?" Levy asked again, completely befuddled.

"Don't you get it?" He burst out. "It's like…it's like an indirect…an indirect k-k-" he sputtered, but the word seemed to be lodged in his throat, and he put one hand over his face, trying in vain to hide his blush. "Aw fuck, forget it." He couldn't bring himself to say it, but Levy's eyes lit up with sudden comprehension.

"An indirect kiss?" She asked, matter-of-factly and he turned his head away from her steadfastly, ears burning. "If that's the problem, you should have said so earlier, Gajeel!"

He opened his mouth to respond, but then her slender fingers cupped his jaw and she turned his head to face her and sat up to press a single, cool kiss to his lips before sitting back with an air of smug satisfaction.

"There," she announced calmly, digging into the ice cream again." Now that you've gotten a direct kiss, you don't need to worry about indirect ones anymore, Gajeel! Now have some ice cream!"

She held out the spoon to him, but he didn't move. She flapped one hand in front of his eyes, with no response. He might as well have been a statue, so she smiled and cheerfully shoveled the spoonful of ice cream into his still-open mouth. He ate it mechanically, and she smiled at him as he blinked, the stunned expression starting to leave his face.

"Good?" She asked.

He looked at her, head still spinning, lips alight with sensation, hot and cold and disbelief and happiness. She had tasted like ice cream. Wordlessly, he nodded, still unable to process speech at the moment. She grinned at his nod and shifted to sit next to him so that their legs were touching, and as he swallowed his mouthful of ice cream, another spoonful was held up for him, and he looked down, flushing as she smiled up at him.

"It's your ice cream, after all," she said, motioning towards the new spoonful, and he leaned forwards and took it from her quickly, his blush spreading up to his ears.

They sat in companionable silence with the warmth of sand and sea around them, sharing the single pint of ice cream until there was no more, and as he lay down next to her and stared at the perfect expanse of cloudless blue sky overhead, he couldn't help but think that ice cream had never tasted so damn good before.

* * *

**A/N** - It's been a while since my last update, so have some cute summer beachtimes for all! Liked it? Let me know! :D


	12. Love Comes Easy

**Love Comes Easy**

* * *

She loves very easily.

Perhaps its just her nature, or maybe it's a fault and her heart is too large for her own good, but she loves easily and freely, shares the ocean of her heart with all her friends, and in return is loved by all. That was why when she first became aware that she was growing closer and closer to the sullen Iron Dragon, it was not a difficult step to make the transition from 'like' to fall straight into 'love'.

She was so used to loving all her friends that at first, she was unaware that this was a different sort of love that had crept slow but sure into her heart, and it bewildered her, left her with a racing pulse and a hot face upon too-close proximity or accidental brushes of the hand and arm. Finally, after a rainy-day _almost_ that shocked her to the core, as she lay wide-eyed and sleepless in her bed after washing the rain out of her hair, she admitted it to herself.

She had never been IN love before.

Sure, there had been that ridiculous, secret little crush on Laxus back in the old days when he was still around, but at some point in their lives, every girl in Fairy Tail had harbored some sort of crush towards the lightning mage, with his volatile temper and teenage coolness and loud music.

Sure, she had loved before, truly and deeply, with all her heart, but it was the type of love shared easily between friends. Of _course_ she would do anything for her friends, but this love ran deeper, into the uncharted depths of her heart, and she was scared of what she was discovering, because somewhere in those unfathomable depths lay a crude seed of selfishness, and she was so used to sharing her heart that it caught her unawares.

Because she was so used to loving, being loved, she couldn't understand why he didn't return her feelings immediately.

* * *

Gajeel could never truly claim to have loved anything in his entire bitter life before.

There was Metalicana, but even his devotion to the dragon was more like adoration, hero-worship and fear and awe mixed together all in one. He supposed that it could be called love, but he refused to admit it even to himself, because it was easier for him to say that he'd never loved the selfish bastard when he thought of waking to an empty den and sitting by himself for week upon lonely week, waiting for a dragon who wouldn't return.

When he started falling for this girl, with her cornflower hair and sunny smiles and leatherbound books, he had been utterly terrified, because it was like nothing he'd ever experienced in his life before, and the thought of losing it terrified him just as much as the thought of having it did. He hadn't even realized that he'd been falling, and by the time he caught on it was far too late and he might as well have invested a piece of his soul in her, he was so utterly captivated.

But he pulled away and hid his terror and confusion behind his surly demeanor, pretended that her smiles didn't make his heart race wildly in his chest, rolled his eyes dismissively at her enthusiastic talk of books that he later searched out and skimmed so that he'd have a vague idea of what she was babbling about.

He refused to let himself love her, and told himself that it was because he wasn't worthy of her love. Maybe it was his destiny in life to never love. He hadn't considered that he was punishing himself by not letting anyone close to him after that one great betrayal.

Just the memory of that terrible hurt left him cringing, and if he took another blow like that from this girl who held his patchwork iron heart in her hands, it would utterly destroy him, so he kept her at arm's-length even as he longed to pull her close.

* * *

She wasn't a selfish person.

She shared her books like she shared her heart; easily, freely, enthusiastically loaning her novels and paperbacks to any who asked, taking care to reserve a few romance novels from a series she knew Erza liked, making sure to drop by Lu-chan's apartment with a new adventure novel that she knew her friend would appreciate.

She wasn't selfish, but when it came to Gajeel, she was dismayed to find that she hoarded his company greedily, found herself resenting the time he spent talking with Juvia or arguing with Natsu and Erza, only to feel utterly guilty afterwards because they were her friends too and she shouldn't be begrudging them anything, much less their time spent with Gajeel. Still, she couldn't help the familiar heartsore twinge she got whenever she saw him bickering with Lucy or playing drinking games with Cana, and it bothered her immensely until she finally came to realize that he was the one thing she _couldn__'__t_ share.

_He__'__s __mine!_ She wanted to cry out as she saw him talking with Mirajane at the bar, but she stifled that jealous voice and scolded herself for being so possessive over something that didn't rightly belong to her in the first place.

* * *

He was terribly, consumingly selfish and he knew it.

If he allowed himself to love her, he'd never let anyone near her again because she was _his _goddamit, and even now, watching her laugh and hug Erza and the Heartfilia girl as they returned safely from their most recent mission, his lips drew into a thin line and his heart clenched in his chest until he turned away from the sight.

When those two idiots of hers pounce on her and haul her away between them, his hands itch to pry them off of her, to snarl warnings at them so that they'll never touch her ever again. It should be _his_ arm slung around her shoulders, _his_ cheek pressed affectionately to her hair, _his_ hands held in hers hauling her up from where she's been knocked down by that careless bastard Elfman. He gritted his teeth and took a huge gulp of his drink, almost biting off a piece of the tankard in his stiff jaws.

He knew that he shouldn't be this irrationally jealous of her lapdogs or the Heartfilia girl, but unaccountably he _is_, and even the _thought_ of someone else's hands on her has him seeing red. He learns to check his temper though, ruthlessly crushing the wayward desire to push his way between her and whoever's touching her, even though all he wants to do is curl himself protectively around her, walling off the rest of the world that seems to want her just as much as he does.

It was still a while before he could come to terms with the undeniable fact that she's the one thing he can't hoard all to himself no matter how much he wants to. She's loved by far too many people for him to be able to monopolize all her time and attention, and whatever claim he has on her heart, it's outweighed by his past actions as well as her deep connections within the Guild. It would be cruel of him to deny her all her friendships and demand that she turn the overwhelming warmth of her heart to him and only him. He might have done it before, but not now.

Even though it rankled him mercilessly, he came to the grudging inevitability that he would have to learn to share her with the rest of the guild, and even though he'd never been the best at sharing, he'd do it for her because she deserved to be happy, even if it wasn't with him.

* * *

Even though love comes easily to her, she thinks it might be all right to reserve a part of her heart especially for him, separate from her love for the rest of her friends. He deserves that much at least, to own a corner of her heart; a piece of her that belongs solely to him. When she looks at him squabbling with Natsu and Gray or slouching at the bar with Juvia and Mirajane and feels the awful sting of jealousy, she touches the corner of her heart that she's set aside for him and smiles to herself, knowing that at least there he belongs to her alone, untouchable by anyone else.

x

Love has never come easily to Gajeel, and it's still such a foreign concept to him - to love and be loved in return - that he avoids it just because he doesn't understand what it entails, but sometimes he looks at her and thinks _maybe_. Just maybe. He's held his heart close to him for so long, guarded it with such jealous zeal that he can't fathom the idea of partitioning his devotion. For him, it's all or nothing, but he looks at her smile and can't help but think that she'd be worth it all. He'll never be able to share his heart with the world the way she does, but he'd give it to her, and for him, that would be enough.

* * *

**A/N** - Character study piece that was very fun to write (present tense always is!) but not entirely accurate, especially Levy. That bothers me a bit, and if, on the off chance that I decide to remove this chapter, you'll be able to find it archived at my writing lj (corrose dot livejournal dot com)

So. I'm back in a writing mood and trying to get some progress made on TSPH. The current chapter really is giving me hell, I re-read the entire Phantom Lord arc over again just to get the timeline/events more canon and I must have re-written the stupid thing around three times at this point, and the sad part is, it's not even a huge chapter, just a sort of transition so all that hard work...bah...but it's okay because I love TSPH and I really want to get into the later chapters so I must finish! (fighting!)


	13. Something to Live For

**Something to Live For**

* * *

"Our condolences." The doctor says.

"Childbirth complications," they murmur, and to his ringing ears it just sounds like excuses.

"She wouldn't stop bleeding," one man says, looking squeamish, and Gajeel punches him, shattering the little man's nose, because the thought that she died in such an awful way without him being able to help her leaves him so full of rage and despair that the world will never be right again. He turns and runs, ignoring the sound of the man's curses as he clutches his fountaining nose, and he wishes that he could kill them all even as he knows that it won't help.

* * *

He screams violent curses at the sky, levels the entire Western Magnolia forest into kindling in his helpless misery, trying to force his body past its physical limits, needing to _hurt_, to black out, anything to stop this heartbreak. He finally collapses, utterly spent but still conscious, and weeps, turning his face into the ground. He doesn't care who sees because really what was the point anymore when she wasn't around to act tough for? Before all this happened, he'd held a vision of their house in his mind, the walls lined with pictures of the three of them, maybe four, maybe even five, but now all that hope turns to ash in his heart and he claws at himself as if it'll help ease the agony that's eating him away from the inside.

"Gajeel." The voice cuts unwelcome through his misery and he snarls halfheartedly as Salamander, Lucy and Gray step into the devastated clearing made by his grief and rage.

"Gajeel," Lucy's voice wavers. "Please. You need to stop."

"Do you think you're the only one who lost something precious?" Natsu demands, but there isn't any real fire in his sad voice.

"No!" he howls, sitting up dizzily. "No! I – My – She was _my_ - how could you!" – he slams both fists into the ground, cratering it as tears run freely down his face – "How could you ever fucking understand?" He starts to sob, deep, wrenching, awful sobs that make Lucy start to weep and Natsu and Gray wipe helplessly at their eyes, mouths turning down wretchedly at the corners.

"We can't," Lucy says, crying freely with him. "We can't and I don't think we ever will, understand, that is. You two" – he makes a spastic, convulsive movement as his heart threatens to strangle him, because they aren't you two anymore, are they? It's just him, one, all alone, alone alone alone and he breaks all over again on the inside, pain and misery splintering through him. Lucy continues bravely past her tears, although her voice hitches with sobs. "You two were – you were, you were _perfect_, but, but you have to understand that Levy went in knowing the risks!"

Gajeel wants to cover his ears and scream. He doesn't want to listen to what bunny girl is saying because he knows it's true, because Levy had told him the same damn thing, but he hadn't taken her seriously and now she was gone without even the closure of a last goodbye. His heart feels like it's shredding itself to pieces and it should be right to die like this, in despair, alone and in misery, because he hadn't taken her _seriously _and now look what's happened. His face crumples and he puts a hand over it, his voice breaking.

Lucy stamped her foot and sobbed. "She knew this might happen!" She screamed. "She was always a small girl and they said it would be difficult! She knew this might happen, and you know what she told me? She told me it'd be worth it all, that it'd be worth everything, this child, because – because she _loved _you, and she loved your child already, and and your baby - she'd be the _proof _of your love, proof that you belonged to her, and that she belonged to you."

Gajeel's breath hitches as he's suddenly aware that there's a thin, high thread of crying that doesn't belong to him or any of the other three who stand there, unwelcome intruders in his grief. Lucy motions Natsu over, and Gajeel realizes that Salamander has been crying quietly, stolidly in the background as Lucy's been talking for the last several minutes. Then his attention shifts to the flailing bundle of pink blankets in Natsu's arms and the rest of the world disappears. Lucy brushes her tears aside and takes a deep breath, reaching over gently to cradle the baby, Gajeel and Levy's perfect child, in her arms. She walks over to the broken Iron dragon, heedless of the splintered trunks and wrecked wood and destruction in a circle around him, to present this broken man with the sight of his beautiful child.

"She gave everything," Lucy whispered. "Levy fought so hard for her, and right now she _needs _you, because without you, she's got no one else in the world."

Gajeel stares at the bundle of pink in Lucy's arms with empty eyes and Natsu and Gray tense instinctively, hoping for the best reaction as Gajeel's hands finally move upwards from where they've been hanging at his sides like blocks of wood. He takes the squalling baby from Lucy and stares at the screwed-up red face blankly, and they all hold their collective breath. Then, with a slow tenderness that none of them has ever seen before from this crude man, Gajeel reaches out to cradle his perfect child in the crook of one powerful arm, gently presses his face into the milk-sweet bedding and closes his eyes to breathe in. He runs his huge thumb gently along the thatch of bright blue hair that crowns his daughter's head in a gentle, repetitive movement until she stops screaming and finally unscrews her face to look at him with the frank, open curiosity of infants, and he laughs and sobs at the same time as he sees that she has his eyes.

With the tears still fresh on his face, with his grief still raw and weeping within him, he smiles at this girl with his eyes and her hair and thinks that maybe it might be okay to still be alive. Just for the years it took to raise his – their – daughter. It's a miserable, wretched smile, cut through and through with grief, but it's a smile nonetheless, and Lucy, Gray and Natsu all relax marginally. Lucy steps forward then with a bottle of something warm, and Gajeel takes it from her without tearing his eyes away from his child and Lucy smiles past her tears as he starts to feed the baby with a practiced familiarity, likely clouted into his thick head by a frantic and pregnant Levy.

Natsu wipes his wet face and lets out a sigh of relief he didn't know that he'd been holding. He thinks that he's never seen something like that before and probably never will again, the transcendental moment where a broken man found the will within himself to live again. Seeing the light reignite in Gajeel's dead red eyes, hearing his heart start beating with a new purpose, he thanks god because he'd been prepared for a tragedy. He's going to go home when this is all over and hold Lucy and never let her go. He steps forward again instead, a bit of his old bravado returning.

"Hey," he says. "We won't let you do this alone, you idiot dragon, because I know how you run away from people to try and do your own thing, and we won't let you this time, you hear? You still have us. _She_ has us. All of Fairy Tail. We don't abandon our own, even if they are stupid metal-headed dragons."

"Her name." Gajeel asks, his voice still thick and strangled. "What's her name."

They exchange glances. "I – she doesn't – Levy didn't –" Lucy falters and Gajeel nods and closes his eyes as two tears stream silently down his face.

"Lenora." He says quietly. "Her name is Lenora."

Lucy smiles, weeping freely. "It's perfect," she says, and Natsu and Gray nod behind her, Gray wiping the last of the tears off of his face.

In the days that pass, Natsu's words come true as Gajeel tries to wall himself off from the world with only his grief and Lenora to break it, but the Guild refuses to let that happen, and he's visited every single day by visitors clamoring to see the baby and coo over her bright blue hair and chubby smile. He snarls at them to go away, clutching her to him protectively, but she reaches out over his powerful arms with live curiosity in her face and he can't begrudge her anything, even though all he wants to do is hold her fragile, warm body to his chest and protect her forever.

* * *

**3 months**

He can't do this alone, fuck him, he can't he _can't_, he thinks as he flings himself towards the source of the thin, high crying that's permeated into his dreams. Frowzy-haired and dull-eyed, he grabs the bottle set on his bedside for this very purpose (still warm, courtesy of Salamander's homemade lacryma) and stumbles his way over to the crib in the corner. He leans down and picks up his screaming brat, holding her to him and rocking her back and forth in a familiar, practiced motion until she starts to quiet. He offers her the bottle, which she takes greedily, and he sighs and holds her to him for a few long minutes as she drains the bottle before he checks the clock on his bedside with tired eyes.

It reads 4AM and he groans helplessly. He stares at her contented face with slight resentment building in his chest because did she really have to pick the most god-awful times to get hungry and – she looked up at him with sleepy eyes and _smiled_ and the rest of the world froze as hesitantly, he smiled back. Her smile grows larger on her tiny face and she reaches up her tiny hand for him, snatching a piece of his dangling hair, which he gently replaces with his index finger. She's smiling at him one second and asleep the next, but the memory of her first smile - _for him, all for him and only him_ - hums like a warm light through his blood. He kisses her forehead before drawing the blankets around them and falling into an exhausted sleep against the headboard, cradling her in his arms, and Pantherlily finds them that way when he opens the door next morning.

* * *

**1 year**

He's _tired_ and achey and fucking just _tired _as all hell. He's moving his leg up and down repetitively, bumping Lenora against his chest as she numbles at the sloppy food he's trying to coax into her mouth. She's making lots of sounds in the shapes of words and he grins as she garbles a string of unintelligible nonsense words, nodding at her like he understands.

"Yeah, yeah, daddy hears you," he says, trying to tempt her with another tiny spoonful of mush. "What daddy really wants you to do is open your mouth right now though," he says, with a hint of exasperation in his voice. She smiles at him and his heart jumps as he smiles back, and to his eternal gratitude, she opens her mouth, but before he can get her to eat the apple-flavored whatever, she very clearly says something that makes his heart stop in his chest.

"Daddy," she says, followed by enthusiastic garbling.

He laughs, tremulously, and points to himself. "Me?" He asks.

She smiles, brilliantly, and claps her hands against him. He closes his eyes and puts his arms around her, lifting her and burying his face into her sweet-smelling baby clothes, regardless of the messy food stains from her bib that get into his hair and face. He holds her for a long time, shaking with emotion, forcing the heat in the back of his eyes away, stays that way until she starts to cry insistently, tiny hands tangling into fists in his hair. Only then does he gather the shreds of his composure and set about comforting her, returning to the thanklessly frustrating task of time-honored dads everywhere and trying to get her to eat without making an absolute mess.

* * *

**1 Year, 5 months **

He's going over several job requests on his table, trying to figure out a timetable where he can find someone to look after Lena for the day that he's gone when he hears a fumbling noise behind him and whips around to look for her frantically because god, he'd only taken his eyes off her for _one goddamn second_ and she's disappeared and – his breath catches in his throat as he sees her standing unsurely next to the couch, clutching at the ottoman for support. Oh god, she's _standing _but it's unsteady and it looks like she's going to fall at any second and it's all he can do not to leap out of his chair and catch her as she lets go of the ottoman, aiming tenaciously for her stuffed animal, which is all the way on the other side of the room. He finds himself on his feet, her name already on his lips, but he holds his breath and watches because despite the screaming, instinct-deep urge to try and protect her forever, he knows that it's not possible and she needs to learn how to fall before she can pick herself up.

She falls (inevitably) and starts to scream and he does swoop over then to comfort her, chanting a song under his breath and making faces until she stops screaming to smile at him, but when he puts her back down, she immediately tries again, fumbling awkwardly to her tiny feet. She takes two hesitant steps forward only to fall – he holds his breath – but she gets up with a teary-eyed determination that's so familiar to him that it _hurts_, and makes a tottering path all the way over to her stuffy, whereupon she falls and grips it and gives him a teary look, and he's on his knees next to her, his arms wrapped fiercely around her tiny body, his face pressed into her perfect blue hair.

"Daddy's proud," he says, his throat thick with emotion.

* * *

**4 years **

She's an Iron-make mage, and for one fleeting second he's disappointed because he'd hoped that some part of her mother lived on in her, that she'd be a Solid Script mage, but in the next moment he's grinning and puffed up stupidly with pride because that's obviously _his_ influence and she's a goddamn _artist _and why can't anyone else see how _awesome_ she is as she flings her hand through the air, creating a long metal arc in the same shape, crowing and clapping her hands with delight. When she makes her first Father's day gift for him though, it's all he can do not to fall apart as a million emotions swallow him up.

"Do you like it?" She asks shyly, her tiny blue head pushed demandingly against his side as he reverently examines the crudely-placed junctions of the tiny wings and limbs.

"I don't like it," he says straight-faced, and watches her face crumple before snatching her into a hug. "I LOVE IT," he roars, and her tears turn immediately to smiles and she shrieks with laughter as he tickles her mercilessly.

"Don't eat it," she says seriously when he finally relents, and just to tease her, he brings the little iron dragon close to his face, opening his mouth wide until she screams and tries to charge him and save her present, but he catches her easily with one arm and lifts her into the air to hold her close, closing his eyes as he rests his face against her soft cheek.

"Thank you, Lena" he says, hugging her fiercely, his emotions raging in his chest as he struggles not to be overwhelmed with the intensity of the feelings that storm through him, love and gratitude and bliss and a terrible sadness that will never go away. Lenora puts her chubby arms around his neck and smiles serenely, noticing nothing amiss.

"You're welcome, daddy," she says simply.

* * *

**5 Years**

At the hospital, Lucy brings Lenora to him. To his surprise, she hangs in the background with teary eyes and doesn't approach him. He looks down at himself and wonders if she's scared of the bandages that crisscross his head and torso.

"She's scared because everyone says you were hurt badly," Lucy explains in a whisper, and Lenora turns her watery eyes to him and finally runs forward as he beckons her over with a grin. She flings herself into his arms and starts to cry and he holds his daughter to him with fierce love, burying his face into her hair.

"Don't leave!" She said, sobbing. "Everyone said that you would leave me alone! Lenora doesn't want daddy to go away!" Her words pierce his heart like arrows and he thinks back to a day when he woke up alone to an empty cave and a swirling gray sky, and he bites his lip and holds her closer.

"Daddy will never leave you alone," he says into her hair as Lucy smiles behind her hand, listening outside the door. He will never be the person who walks away from his child, not while he can still draw air into his lungs. He could never be so selfish.

"Promise!" She cries.

"I promise," he says solemnly, and holds up his pinky for her to link with. Her eyes go wide because everyone knows that's the ULTIMATE promise, and she carefully links her finger around his, holding his huge hand steady against her tiny palm. "You believe me now?" he asks her teasingly, and she finally gives him a tearful smile before throwing her skinny arms around his neck in response. He grunts a bit with pain, but he doesn't let her go and thinks wryly to himself that maybe Lenora shouldn't hang around Juvia so much because she's picking up that weirdass way of speaking.

From that day on he leaves the S-class jobs to Titania and Salamander and the rest. He takes easy, high-paying investigative jobs that don't require much traveling. Occasionally he'll grab the odd A or B ranked mission to put the smackdown on some group of bandits or thugs, just for old times' sake, but he always has Lily to watch his back.

He won't do things by himself anymore because he can't risk the chance that he'll break that all-important promise.

* * *

**7 years**

"I hate my eyes!" She burst out, crying. He looks up to see her flinging her school bag onto the ground and throwing herself onto the couch, punching the cushions with furious abandon. He notices her missing ribbon and her rumpled hair and the dirt that speckles her face and clothing and bites his lip and counts slowly to 10 because he'd like nothing in the world than to rip her bullies into bloody little pieces, but they're kids and that would just be improper but _it would serve them goddamn right_ for hurting her, _his one his only his Lena_.

He shakes his head and walks over to pick her up and put her on his lap.

"You have daddy's eyes," he says simply as she pouts with her arms crossed. "You hate daddy's eyes too?"

She looks up then and sees it's true, and her mouth opens in a scandalized 'o' of realization before she dissolves into guilt, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes.

"No," she mumbles, tugging at his shirt and kicking the air. "I love daddy's eyes. I just don't like when those kids tease me."

He grins then, hugs her conspiratorially. "Hih hih. Don't worry, Lena. Daddy will teach you just how to make them stop, and if that doesn't work then daddy will beat them up for you and say that it was that idiot Salamander who did it," he grins, and it's so full of anticipatory malice that she can't help but smile past her tears.

"Thank you, daddy," she says, and hugs him.

* * *

**12 years**

"You can't go," he said flatly, in that tone of voice she knew brooked no argument, and frustration crested in her chest as she crossed her arms and glared at him.

"Why NOT?" She demanded shrilly, and he glared right back, giving her just as good as he got.

"Because," he finally gritted out.

"Because what?" She exploded. "Because you're being _mean_ and _dumb _and it's _my_ birthday but you won't let me go, even though it's my party?"

His eyes go flat and he opens his mouth to say something, but she beats him to the punch.

"I hate you!" She screams and flees to the Guild, unable to see the awful hurt that spreads across Gajeel's face afterwards.

Lucy is there as Lenora bursts in through the double doors, stomping her way over to the bar and seating herself furiously in one of the barstools, hands gripping the edge in a white-knuckled grip as she spins herself around, muttering furiously. Lucy and Mirajane exchange glances and Mirajane coughs and discreetly heads towards the back, saying she has to pick up some more supplies.

"What's wrong, Lenora?" Lucy asks, gently.

"Dad's being stupid and mean," Lenora says, and her voice trembles. "He won't let me go to Elly and Rydian's party, even though they said they were throwing it just for me." Her lip wobbled suspiciously and Lucy smiled.

"Your dad just loves you," she said simply. "You don't understand how important you are to him."

"Everyone _says_ that," Lenora burst out, swiping angrily at her eyes. "But that's not true! He doesn't care about me at all!"

Lucy put down her drink sternly. "Don't say that, Lenora! You don't know how badly he'd be hurt if he heard that!"

"Maybe he _should_ be hurt," Lenora muttered, rebelliously, and Lucy shook her head sadly.

He's been hurt enough, don't you think?" she asked. "You just don't know because you didn't see what your daddy was like before. Before he met your mom, he was…he was so different." Lenora sat up, listening closely, because her dad _never_ talks to her about how he met her mom.

Lucy continued, her voice sad and gentle. "Before he met your mom, he was… well, he was part of another Guild, and he attacked Fairy Tail and he hurt your mom very badly, you know, but she forgave him, and then they started to fall for each other. It was like they were throwing bricks at each other, they were so _dense_! And...and you didn't see him, that awful day when your mom…"

Lucy's lip wobbled, but she laughed and brushed away the tears. "Look at me! Still crying over that! But your dad…Honestly, I thought he would die too, he was so heartbroken. I've never seen someone _hurting_ so much before. If we hadn't brought you with us when we went to look for him, I think he might have just…faded away that day from too much hurt. But…but when he saw you, it was like someone had breathed life back into him."

She fixed Lenora with a tear-filled smile. "Lenora. You are the most important person in the world to him. I know every mom or dad thinks of their child this way, but…but for Gajeel, it's never been more true. He's never loved anyone more than he loves you, because he loves you enough for both him _and_ your mom. And I think you should apologize to him because you already knew that, right?"

Lenora was already crying silently, fat tears rolling down her face as she nodded, miserably. "I will," she finally said, wiping her eyes, "but will you tell me more about mom and dad? Dad never ever tells me about her."

"He loved your mom like nothing I've ever seen before," Lucy said, her eyes faraway. "He was absolutely _crazy_ for her. He loved her more than he loved anything else in the world. That's why he was so hurt when she died, because she was the only one worth having, the only one he ever let himself love, before you came along." Lucy sighed, looking sad and worn. "He visits your mom a lot, but I know that he always visits her on your birthday to tell her about you, so you might want to head back soon." Lenora looked at her in confusion.

"No, he doesn't," she said. "Usually we visit the Guild and have my cake and then we go to sleep."

Lucy blinked in surprise. "Oh!" She said, looking uneasy. "I guess I was wrong."

Lenora saved that bit of information though, turning it slowly in her mind, because she knew her dad better than Aunt Lucy did and she had an inkling of an idea. When she got home, she snuck straight to her bed without apologizing because she was still _angry_ and her dad _deserved_ to stew for a bit. That night though, she waited instead of falling asleep, and sure enough, she heard the quiet, purposeful sounds of someone sneaking out. Already dressed to follow, she flung her covers back and crept along behind the unmistakable outline of her dad, feeling very smug indeed. She followed him to mom's grave, where she hid behind a tree and watched him as he looked at the gravestone, his hands in his pockets.

It's getting cold and she wants to go back when he finally speaks.

"Hey," he says simply, and pauses as if waiting for a reply.

"Lena turned 12 today," he continues, almost conversationally. "She's such a goddamn spitfire nowadays, kinda like you were when you'd get mad at me. She made a new Iron-Make attack the other day, named it and everything. I think you'd have been really proud of her. We did the usual thing for her birthday and went to the Guild and those idiots all sang and danced and gave her a right good time. It was a lot of fun, actually." He sighed and ran his hand through her hair. "She wanted to go to some party that Laxus' kid was holding afterwards and I said no because that one kid of Mira's is _trouble_, and she got so _angry_ at me. Said she hated me." He stepped forward then, put his hand on the gravestone and bowed his head.

"Fuck," he said quietly, and his voice shook. "I didn't even know what to say. How could I tell her that I was just being an overprotective dick? How could – she's so, she's just" – he made a choked sound and stopped talking, shoulders shaking minutely. "If you were here, you'd have known what to do. I know it."

He let out a shaky breath, swiped at his face, and Lenora realized to her absolute horror, that her dad was _crying_. Her dad _never_ cried. He was the toughest and bravest man in the world, and he was quietly brushing tears away from his face as he continued speaking.

"I _miss_ you," he finally said, and there was such a note of plaintive yearning in his voice that Lenora started to cry too, stuffing her knuckles into her mouth to prevent herself from making a sound. "I wish you were here so that I didn't have to do this alone," he said. "But you aren't, and I'll do this because she's worth it. She's worth everything. Just like you were." He rested his hand tenderly on the stone, ran his fingers lovingly across the name engraved into the surface.

"I love you," he said quietly, the love and hurt and yearning of 12 long years contained in those three words, and then with a long sigh he turned and began to head back towards the house.

Lenora broke cover and hurled herself into her father's surprised arms. "I'm sorry!" She howled. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean it!"

Gajeel looked understandably shocked as he gathered his sobbing daughter into his arms, but as her jumbled words finally began to make sense, he smiled and quickly swiped at his eyes with his wrist to brush off the last of his (_so_ unmanly) tears. He hugged her and rested his chin on her head with a wry grin as she hugged him fiercely, mumbling her apologies over and over.

"It's okay," he finally shushed. "I got it." She looked up at him with teary, beseeching eyes and he couldn't help but grin. She looked so much like her mom when she did that, for all that she had his red eyes. "Stop that," he finally said, patting her face sternly.

"I'm sorry," she said again, wiping at her eyes. "I didn't mean it, everything I said."

"I know you didn't," he said, and squeezed her shoulder fondly. "Kids never say what they mean."

Lenora wiped the last of her tears away and looked back at her mother's white gravestone. "You really miss mom, don't you dad?" she asked, and Gajeel's face fell into familiar lines of misery before he rallied himself.

"Yeah," he said. "I don't think I'll ever be able to _not_ miss her." His face was more open than she'd ever seen it before.

"She was my world," he said quietly."She was my heart." Then he looked at her and smirked and ruffled her hair. "Just like you are now."

She smiled, but it was a sad smile, until he put his arm around her and gave her a firm hug. "We'll just have to miss her together, yeah?" She nodded past her new tears and allowed her dad to walk her back to the house, his warm arm slung around her skinny shoulders.

As he was walking, Gajeel cast one last lingering glance back at Levy's headstone. It was true, he'd never be able to stop missing her, but he'd have to wait a bit longer before joining her.

He had a daughter to raise, after all.

* * *

**A/N** - Ahh eff me, why did I write this awful thing? I cried absolute buckets while writing this because I'm a stupid overemotional sap so I don't even – curse my hormones and my brain for conspiring to produce this horrible thing! I must have looked a pitiful sight indeed, crying and typing at the same time and I'm feeling really down right now so I'm...sharing the misery? lol. I dunno. I've always identified a bit more with Gajeel than with Levy so writing this was just absolute crippling heartbreak on my part too because I love both characters to bits god these emotions I can't contain them hnggghdhjkd.

Still, I just thought…Gajeel's always been prone to loneliness, so it's always been in the back of my mind that Levy's death would _shatter_ him, far worse than if it was the other way around. If there wasn't a reason to stick around after, I just...I dunno. Also, the thought of Gajeel as a single dad is just absolutely fucking heartbreaking. I'm usually not a fan of kidfics in general, but…yeah. I guess I made an exception. And OOCness is just blah everywhere I mean, even the_ kid_ is OOC but I don't care.

About the name choice - I randomly chose Lenora on the spot while planning to change it later, because it was the only name I could think of off the top of my head that had the same starting letters as Levy, but I looked it up later and Lenora means 'shining light' and it fits so well that I couldn't have planned it better.


End file.
